kkxts ti ffivxtyt, 



FRAMED IN IDEAS 



BY C. A. BARTOL. 






" What thy soul holds dear, imagine it 
To lie that way thou go'st." Shakspeare. 




BOSTON: q) 



CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 

111, Washington Street. 
1855. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 

CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 






} a 



BOSTON : 

ritlNTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 

22, School Street. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGK. 

The Two Journeys 1 

Abroad and at Home 3 

Beauty of the World 33 

The Mountains 55 

The Rivers 87 

The Laeies 105 

The Sea 129 

Superiority of Art to Nature 155 

Testimony of Art to Religion 179 

The Enduring Kingdom 213 

The Church 235 

Society 251 

Country 269 

Mankind 293 

History 317 

Destiny . . . 347 

The Guide 373 



The Ascent of Mont Blanc, by I. T. Talbot, M.D. . 375 



THE TWO JOURNEYS. 



Forth to the East ! Revivings of the day 
Break, pouring promised strength upon my way ; 
Another line thy weary footsteps pressed ; 
Thy sim of life was lowering to the West. 

Ah, gracious Nature ! ah, soul-cheering Art ! 
Was it for this you did your healing part, — 
Lengthening my lease for destiny so poor, 
To see his ashes carried from his door ? 

O earthly father ! whom the heavenly gave, 
And yet can from the mortal sentence save, 
Thou wilt forgive the sigh that damps my songs, 
To think that title all to Heaven belongs. 

Sad tears, with joyful, dropped from me apace, 
While thou thy chequered history wouldst trace : 
Thy words sublime, my parent, oft shall rise 
To keep some blessed moisture in my eyes : — 

" The hireling's day I have accomplished now j 
The evening shadows gather on my brow ; 
The hireling for the shadows longs, my son : 
They tell him that his task at last is done. 
1 



THE TWO JOURNEYS. 

" Shadows of five and seventy years are dark, 
Yet Jordan's stream I clearly through them mark j 
And, seeing little, this in death see well, 
No stop, but crossing, — whither, one can tell." 

Strong in my memory thy tones abide ; 

Deep in my heart thy gentle looks I hide ; 

And this returning birthday celebrate 

"With thoughts of thee, whose sojourn fixed my date. 

A courteous pilgrim, with a walk upright ; 
A lowly soul, ne'er stooping from its height : 
The outer man expressed the hidden frame ; 
Thy seeming and thy being were the same. 

No longer for this fleshly eye and ear 

That aspect so pathetic, speech sincere ! 

Oh, in that other voice and face be found 

Some lingering traits of former sight and sound ! 

In glorious reaches of my journey led, 
With ceaseless joy and various wonder sped, 
The gates of beauty opening to my glance, 
A constant motion in perpetual trance, — 

1 gazed o'er all the mighty endless plan, 
Pictured and wrought by hand of God or man ; 
Yet, as through swelling land and sea I went, 
Saw not the splendors of thy Orient. 

Something between me and the grave is gone ; 
Plainer I can discern my own tombstone ; 
But now more pleasant thither looks my road, 
To journey with thee when I drop my load. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 



Columbus courts the angry breeze, 
New worlds to win through Western seas : 
Fain would returning pilgrims gain 
The old world, haunting so their brain . 

Seeketh the traveller lands afar ; 
Following the light of every star, 
Borne on the wings of every wind, 
He learneth what he left behind. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 



De Quincey, I think, somewhere describes the 
curious process by which an ancient parchment was 
made to carry several successive meanings. One 
inscription, being partly effaced, allowed the legible 
entry of another upon the same surface, which, in 
turn, likewise gave place to a third and fourth. 
Then a reversal of the process, or rubbing out of 
the last inscription, revealed the marks of the pre- 
ceding, even to the first. Such a parchment is 
called a palimpsest, or something retouched. A tra- 
veller, coming back from a long journey, may well 
think he finds the best of all palimpsests to be his 
trunk. Each city or inn, road or frontier village, 
or custom-house, pastes itself on his baggage. One 
inscription over another tells whither he has been, 
where he has stayed, what land or water conveyance 
he has chosen, or kingdom he has passed through. 
England and France and Germany and Italy leave 
their prints upon his valise ; the memorials of a 
continent shrink to the circumference of his carpet- 
bag ; nor could any runaway ever be known by 

l* 



6 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

more tokens than is a modern pilgrim ; so that, from 
patiently removing one after another of these paper 
guide-posts from his pieces of luggage, and also con- 
sulting the ever-repeated authority for him to travel, 
recorded by every nation or town in his passport, 
he might make out a tolerable history of his course. 
Gazing at the red and black letters and figures has 
at least a magical power of association to bear him 
back through the long track he has measured ; and 
makes him fain wish he could, for the information 
of others, discover such a significant palimpsest in 
his mind. 

During the last year, it was my privilege to travel 
through most of the countries of Europe, and to see 
the remarkable objects, which a line of many thou- 
sand miles, running through great cities, along fa- 
mous rivers, over lofty mountains, or by magnificent 
passes, and leading me into some of the chief galle- 
ries of art as well as nature in the world, could 
reveal. Occasional sketches, more or less public or 
private, already given of my experience, have brought 
me frequent inquiries whether I would not offer my 
narrative through the press. This volume is the 
reply. Among the considerations which induce me 
to put it forth, I trust I may, without immodesty 
or appearance of presumptuous claim, be permitted 
to specify as a chief motive my not being aware of 
the existence of any book, which, touching the 
same theme, is composed upon the same principle ; 
though the peculiar aims and merits of many, doubt- 
less, wholly exceed my poor title to regard. At 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 7 

least, for the sake, at the outset, of a right under- 
standing, I desire to say to such as may be my read- 
ers, that I have not attempted a circumstantial history 
of my tour. I have written no exact Itinerary ; I 
have drawn no word-maps of geography ; I have 
not been careful to tell where I went or what 
I did next ; but, venturing to imitate some of the 
poets, have left the unities of time and place when- 
ever I could so observe the higher unities of thought 
and reality, without, I trust, ever violating the pro- 
portions of any fact within my reach. In short, I 
have not told every thing, but the things which 
made on me the strongest impressions ; letting all 
the rest, like the showers I passed through on my 
way, flow off. Like the paddles of the ship, I have 
taken hold of nothing which did not move me ; or 
like a child, who, from a thousand scenes he has 
witnessed in the street, comes back to tell his mother, 
in the loud eagerness of juvenile eloquence, what 
especially caught his fancy, so I hope only to inte- 
rest others in what interested me. I have found the 
almost chaotic mixture of numberless particulars in 
my mind under reflection, stirring itself and forming 
into distinct crystallizations around separate points. 
I have given many delineations of my experience; 
but my pictures, such as they were, framed them- 
selves in my contemplations, and hung of their own 
accord under the light of ideas which showed them 
better to me, as I believe they may to others. Ac- 
cordingly, they will succeed each other in separate 
headings, like the several apartments of a hall, in 



8 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

which I have endeavored to include, tinder each par- 
ticular theme, only what touches the broadest human 
concerns. 

If, notwithstanding these explanations, any one 
say, "Why tell another traveller's story? Why 
add one book more to the huge catalogue, already 
rivalling Roman and Alexandrian collections, of the 
traveller's library?" I certainly can only answer 
furthermore, that every author's own book, by what 
it may have of peculiarity, or prove of addition to 
existing stores, must resolve the best it can such 
sharp queries. Let the present writer's apology for 
the sober tone of his opening essay be only his 
wonder, that travellers, among all their tales, do not 
think it worth while to tell the story of their own 
character, of the mode of their life as distinguished 
from its incidents. We encounter many experiences 
on the road ; but the road itself is an experience, — 
of what sort it is important for those who go or pur- 
pose to go abroad, well to understand. Excellent 
guide-books and guides we may find everywhere ; 
but Murray and Galignani cannot communicate every 
thing we ought to know ; nor any couriers or valets- 
de-place, however experienced to take us through 
museums and up mountains, teach to what our steps 
will bring us in our own minds. If my reader im- 
patiently exclaim, "Why care for that? the only 
thing is to get on ! " — though this boast of swiftness 
is what the world now rings with, and fast motion 
has become the very idolatry of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, a doubt may be permitted whether the rapidity 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 9 

is so very glorious, unless we consider what, at the 
end of the race-course, we are to do with the time 
so magnificently saved ! If space be rushed through 
and the day rescued, only to indulge our appetites, 
to eat and drink and smoke, it would not appear 
that we had got so far and sublimely beyond the 
tented patriarchs after all, though we glide so much 
farther in our short lives than they could creep in 
their long ones, and thus make a fair show of more 
than atoning for the diminished term of human exist- 
ence. However this may be, the fact of our exten- 
sive travelling is reason why we should ask what 
travelling is, and ought to alarm a travelling age to 
reflect whither it is going. If any, with Horatio, 
think " 'twere to consider too curiously to consider 
so," omitting the graver discourse in which I dis- 
charge my conscience, they must even enter the 
grounds of my field of observation, without minding 
the sentinel. Disposed neither to magnify my office 
nor to cheapen my wares, I must yet consider fairly 
these two relative states of Home and Travel. 

Any one who, at sea, has watched the birds fly 
from afar, to hover round his bark, especially some 
land-bird fluttering towards the mast, will not won- 
der that Noah's dove, however fleet and strong, 
should at length come wearily back, when she found 
that, wherever she turned, all was ocean. Then, if 
he has been far and stayed long, it may occur to 
him that the little bird is an image of himself. 

But is this, then, the state of the case for the 
traveller, — for the privileged, the perhaps envied, 



10 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

man who has had this splendid opportunity of 
beholding the world, — for the favored mortal, after 
long confinement, let loose to realize a thousand 
dreams and fulfil romantic hopes cherished from 
childhood, by setting his eyes on the multitude and 
procession of glorious objects that have danced 
before his imagination? Is he disappointed, after 
all, with the introduction for which he had longed ; 
fatigued with the magnificent show after which he 
had run ; and his appetite not satisfied at the table 
where he had crowded for a seat, and which all 
nature and art, and human society, and the monu- 
mental history of the race, had spread for his 
supply ? Contrariwise, far exceeded are all his ex- 
pectations ; nor, in sooth, is there any language or 
expression which can set forth the rare pleasures, 
the intellectual stimulus, the intense life, crowded 
with novel impressions, more numerous in a month 
than are ordinarily experienced in years, — of the 
wise and prosperous traveller. But another feeling, 
— commonly seeming to sleep, — if long unfed, 
rises from its quiet brooding over the heart, to scat- 
ter inferior sentiments, quench feebler excitements, 
and, in its grand chord, to prevail over all worldly 
delights. Who shall tell the unspeakable and un- 
paralleled emotion of joy, when, after any consider- 
able absence, home comes again in sight? When 
the huge body of the sea, by whose broad girdle we 
had crept to the regions of the rising sun, again 
shifts eastward its convex bulk, and we ride over 
the banks and by the capes which the great conti- 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 11 

nent we were born on stretches forth in token of 
her protection to the navigator ; when, after those 
reaches of the briny waste, which, to the supersti- 
tious and disheartened seamen of Columbus, seemed 
literally without end, the firm shore in some head- 
land looms up, though dim and vague, to the wistful 
sight, indescribably dear and precious, with its rug- 
ged, barren outline fixing a spell upon us exceeding 
that of English shaven lawns or brilliant Italian 
sunsets ; when, for the solitude, the solemn, pecu- 
liar, terrible loneliness of the sea, voiceless but for 
some rare trumpet through the whistling winds, and 
blank but for some glimmer of a sail that shines and 
fades on the horizon's edge, re-appears the white- 
winged, sociable flock of ships ; when, sailing above 
the bones of the majestic vessel and her ill-fated 
crew, and giving one shudder of sympathy as we 
stop to sound the depths, we then glide safely on, 
till a little coast-light, more glorious than the morn- 
ing star, a lamp brighter to us than Orion, blazes 
perhaps in the last watch of the night, and soon the 
smoothness of the bay and the narrowing harbor 
takes the place of the tremendous pitch and plunge 
between the poles of the world of the monstrous 
Atlantic, — and the forts, like stony, stiff sentinels, 
with brazen dogs of war, lie asleep full in view at 
the nation's old, dear doorway ; ah ! and when roof 
and spire and dome, from Bunker Hill to the smoke 
of our chimney, reveal themselves, — there is a 
sensation in our being, transcending the effects of 
all foregoing splendors and sublimities, and which 



12 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

boyhood's unsophisticated sight of those seven won- 
ders of the world its primer had told of could not 
equal. As our foot presses the ground, we feel as 
the dove did, when, from wheeling over boundless 
water, through the treeless sky, she lighted in the 
window of the ark. Our city is a lovely Zion to 
us. "We clasp its whole circumference to our hearts. 
"We are of David's mind about his Jerusalem. The 
very stones are precious to us, and we love the dust 
thereof; nor is there a wall or corner, portal or 
pillar, be it friend's or stranger's, that does not find 
favor in our sight. Our own dwelling, with every 
gray look and weather-stain upon it, that seems to 
have mourned our desertion, and to have been long 
yearning for its inmates, — who shall describe the 
transport of its living or even its inanimate wel- 
come ? The swell in the breast, instead of that on 
the sea ; the tears that answer to the stormy shower ; 
the low breathing of thanksgiving into which the 
gale has sunk ; the heaving and melting of the 
whole nature after its struggle with the elemental 
forces, that, with snow and wind and cloud and rain, 
thoroughly sweep the floor of the creation, — testify 
that nothing beneath the sun, on this material stage, 
can match the interest of that scene, wherever laid ; 
however produced, in which the very bosom of man 
makes its confessions. 

But now wherefore is all this ? What does it 
signify, that our greatest discovery in all the world, 
of worth and grandeur, should be precisely of that 
which was most familiar to us ; nay, of what we left 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 13 

behind us when we departed, and fancied perhaps we 
were tired of staying in ; that we should discover, 
not so much foreign cities, with lakes and forests 
and mountains, as our own homes, our kindred and 
acquaintances and friends, all rising to us in a new 
light of intenser meaning ; nothing be so novel, 
exciting, attractive, absorbing to the attention and 
curiosity of our whole mind and heart, as precisely 
what was most common and habitual in our experi- 
ence ; and no voyager, as he discerns yet untrodden 
islands or plants his flag on unclaimed continents, 
sensible of an ecstasy like that with which we see 
our ancient birthright ? Oh, veritable and sublime 
revelation from heaven in the social nature of man ! 
Oh, old and new, customary yet unpenetrated, su- 
perficial and fathomless, mystery of human life ! 
Oh, strange and not understood source of joy and 
sorrow in the great deep of the human breast ! Oh, 
marvellous creative power of God, that can sink in 
the most ordinary realities and feelings of our exist- 
ence a spring whose fulness all the other wells of 
nature cannot equal, whose freshness all the heat 
and dust and trample of years cannot crust over or 
quench ! 

What is this singular quality of our constitution, 
to fix the brand of discontent upon the most allur- 
ing prodigies, and put the kindling of desire into 
the trite circumstances of our lives ? It is none 
other than the simple heart and moral nature of man, 
which no travelling for pleasure and recreation, the 
world over, can quite satisfy. It is that we have a 

2 



14 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

conscience to be fed; and neither Rome nor the 
Alps can feed it. It is that we have affections to be 
exercised ; and all the halls of Europe, with all the 
wild charms of the East, cannot furnish their ob- 
jects. Ah! this soul of ours is hard to entertain, 
when we seek to fill it with entertainment. It 
scorns to be conciliated with expeditions and bland- 
ishments, even infinite and numberless, in place of 
the forsaken offices of daily obligation. Truly it 
requires an enormous flattery. It takes up rivers 
and seas as a very little thing ; and all the pomps of 
the world are as a drop on the sponge to its devour- 
ing thirst. Thus the traveller, who had expected 
exemption from all toil and weariness, in unmingled 
and abounding rapture, is troubled with his soul to 
take care of and content, abroad as at home. The 
Gold Coast he sailed for turns to a sandy beach. A 
refugee from labors and pains, he finds himself un- 
der the same inveterate penalties ; and, what was 
most important for him to do before he started, he 
sees is most important still, — namely, to be sorry 
for his sins, and make his peace with God. So he 
shuts his lids upon the splendors of Paris and Dres- 
den ; is tired of Versailles and the Vatican; and, 
from jewelled chambers and vaults of lavish cost, 
longs to retire, and adjust the serious claims of 
existence. Love and duty, the great bonds and 
underlying foundations of our thought and action, 
necessities of life to a moral creature, first of all 
indispensable to be supplied, — ah! they cannot 
find their scope in the spaces hung with works the 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 15 

most magnificent of human hands. They cannot 
gather their food from the heights sublime, where 
the mountain goats browze, or the patches of glit- 
tering snow, where the chamois, looking like spots 
in the sun, suck sustenance ; but only in the habita- 
tions and paths where human relationships grow, 
and the intercourse of friendly service goes on. 

The traveller learns many precious lessons ; but 
perhaps the most precious of them all, for which 
alone it is well worth one's while to take a long 
journey, as perhaps else it cannot be learned, is 
that the crown of life is in no change of place, but 
is to be in one's home. In this statement is not 
meant by being at home merely to dwell in cham- 
bers of wood and stone, to stay in one spot, to keep 
within city-limits, to pace a uniform track to and 
fro in the street, and move in a narrow circle of 
persons ; but to have a sphere for the exertion of 
our powers, for discharging, through regular labors 
and by the manifestation of lofty and disciplined 
sentiments, the obligations of existence to the com- 
mon blessing. For awhile the traveller drops this 
fine and beautiful bondage of toil, in his business or 
profession, for the general good. Instead of look- 
ing after others, he looks out for himself, for his 
own amusement or benefit. He seeks to be stirred 
by this or that object, and astonished in one or 
another situation. He stands to be thrilled by the 
flash of torrents, and roused with the roar of cas- 
cades. He gazes, for his own enchantment, from 
the top of mountains ; pierces, after strange stimu- 



16 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

lus, into the sparkle of mines ; walks through miles 
on miles of canvas, or amid a population of marble, 
to entertain his eye and luxuriate his fancy ; or, 
going from the sublime to the ridiculous, exercises 
his economic wit to drive bargains as to the sum for 
which all this glory is to be bought. The noble 
traveller will indeed somehow convert whatever he 
enjoys to others' welfare. But if not noble, — and, 
when not noble, he is very mean, — then he covets 
only his own gratification. Sometimes he loses a 
former love and loyalty which had inspired him, and 
falls from the grace of his childhood and youth. 
With worldly wisdom, he becomes falsely wise to 
explode as follies the best practices and feelings of 
his foregoing life ; in the hurry of his movements 
and adventures, leaves behind his Bible, and forgets 
his prayers ; amid glare and circumstance, despises 
the simple worship in which he was bred. He lets 
a superficial and taking glory, like the gaudy color 
of a candle, put out the daylight of the spiritual 
church. Perhaps he counts it a foreign and travelled 
dignity on his return to leave his once-accustomed 
seat for devotion unoccupied ; looks contemptuously 
at common men, who have not been so far as he has ; 
and then, of course, loses the thought of God, the 
Father of men, and deems the whole march of virtue 
and religion but the imposition of an empty show. 

Nay, the reckless traveller may miss the direct 
objects of travel itself. If the animal nature in him 
be strong, you will see him going to the rich variety 
and pampering delicacy of the feast with more relish 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 17 

than to the treasures of the Louvre, or the passes of 
the hills ; if he be selfish and irritable, you will see 
him indulging with impunity, and borne unchal- 
lenged and miserably safe to moral ruin by the 
passions that had made him odious and sorely ques- 
tioned in his own house. I am sorry to say it, but 
it is morally dangerous to travel ; for the traveller's 
object, more than the citizen's, is himself. He is 
usually travelling, as to a proverb we call it, for 
pleasure. As he peers keenly out for his own ad- 
vantage to compass best and cheapest all he is in 
search of, though the very top and flower of the 
outward universe be his pursuit, his character is 
peculiarly exposed; and often, after a considerable 
period, growing dry and hard, plainly evinces that it 
has been taken out of that cool shelter of the do- 
mestic charities, which is the best garden in the 
world, to bake in the blazing sun. If one, then, 
fairly encounters all the liabilities of a long journey, 
makes and settles all the contracts of his way, 
greets and says farewell to the official multitude, 
runs the gauntlet of trial and exposure that 
stretches from one end of Europe to the other, and 
comes out heart-whole, with his simplicity uncor- 
ruptecl, his feelings fresh, and his innocence without 
a stain ; with the warm gush still unobstructed of 
that double fountain that leaps at once to God and 
man ; keeping his old Sunday-feelings unhurt 
through the martial parade, theatric pomp, and 
sensual excess of continental life j contrary to the 
polluting proverb, among the Romans refusing to do 



18 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

as the Romans do, unless when the Romans do 
right ; in fine, losing none of the inner health while 
he re-establishes that of the physical man, — I have 
sometimes thought he must be a wonder of excel- 
lent nature or a miracle of preserving grace. If 
any one charge extravagance upon this language; 
if, out of the great host of past or present travellers, 
rise up avengers upon me of what they hold to be a 
libel ,* or if some, who have stayed at home, remon- 
strate against the ungraciousness of such a seemingly 
thankless return for the privilege of travelling ; or 
there should be mischievous interrogators, curious 
about personal illustrations of this doctrine, — I be- 
seech them, one and all, to remember that I arraign 
nobody in particular, but speak in general, as I saw 
them, of the comparative exposures of a civil and 
settled, as compared with a wandering and migratory, 
life. Let him who has a different testimony be 
equally free to bear it. Were crossing the sea and 
sojourning in foreign lands a specific for wisdom or 
a high school for virtue, in the name of Heaven, 
should everybody, who can be excused, set out. 
But, alas! wisdom and virtue are not so cheap. 
They are not goods sold in the market. I have not 
found them among the manufactures of any country 
I have visited. Most men seem no better or wiser, 
no more eloquent or devout, no more able or useful, 
after they come home than when they went away. 
Still true is what the classic poet wrote, " The sky, 
and not the mind, they change who run over the 
deep." A great display, a vast field of knowledge, 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 19 

no doubt, it is to be shown all the kingdoms of the 
world and the glory of them. But nothing in them 
all countervails the Master's sublime declaration, 
that the kingdom of heaven is within. 

If a man is tired of home, and considers his task 
and profession but a grinding in some mill of the 
Philistines, it may be well for him to go abroad, just 
to see how his house looks from the other side of 
the globe, through the magic glass of mists and 
mountains and waves, and how his business appears 
to him in the light of his leisure and pleasure and 
roving at will. It is good economy to go round the 
world ; less to marvel at its spectacles than to be 
convinced that none of its endless exhibitions, but 
only the moral nature, with the loving heart, in the 
actions they prompt, can truly cheer, transfigure, 
and glorify our human life. I saw a woman on foot, 
amid the slopes of Northern Italy, leading along by 
a halter of rope an ass, on which sat her pale, con- 
sumptive son, — he in his youth, she in her age ; 
and, as I, reclined well at ease in my coach, and, 
through the sunny air, gazed at the tremendous 
snowy peaks beyond, I thought them more blessed 
in their way of travelling than I in mine ; for I was 
reminded of the spirit of him who once travelled 
likewise in Judea. I saw a man coarsely plastering 
the posts of a little building in the great commercial 
city of England ; and, after the hard day's toil, he 
surveyed his humble work with a sort of satisfaction 
illumining his face that I could not remember to 
have derived from York or Milan, Cologne or Stras- 



20 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

burg. It was the moral satisfaction of faithful effort 
to do his part for the improvement of the world. I 
talked with one, bronzed with all the climates of 
the West and the East, looking like a column of 
strength, proof against any kind of dissolving or 
harm. I ventured, however, to congratulate him on 
his coming back to his home. " Ah, sir ! " he an- 
swered, " but to a home how altered ! — my family 
broken up, my kindred gone, my mother vanished 
unseen ! " " These feelings about home are deep," 
I murmured forth, as he came to an embarrassing 
pause. " Very deep, sir," he rejoined ; and rose, 
and walked away. In the far-off city of Salzburg, 
alone in my room, my companions out, I listened to 
the chimes of peculiar sweetness and pathos, that, 
from the belfry there, ring out tune after tune, in 
melody unrivalled, through large part of some of 
the passing hours, till they seemed sounding on to 
me from five thousand miles away ; and those airy, 
invisible notes, better than could the touches of any 
pencil, gave me, full and clear, the colors of my 
abode and birthplace and dear native land. I leaned 
to read the letters, those little messengers, that like 
a bird of the air carry the matter, and so surely sur- 
mount the billows and scale the summits of the 
globe, with tidings from our beloved, whose pre- 
ciousness none but those who have been far away 
can understand, pursuing their swift path undaunted 
day and night, as though, in their cold tissue, they 
bore a flaming fire, kindling human hearts to respon- 
sive glow through the vastness of the globe. While 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. £1 

I took my share of the vital heat they circulate 
through the massive frame of the world, tributes 
from my eyes, pure, I think, though I would not be 
presumptuous, as libations that old worshippers 
poured upon their altars, flowed out, as the mingling, 
a mixture that will not be despised, of earthly sym- 
pathy with gratitude to God. As these pictures of 
real life asserted precedence in my soul of all that 
adorn the ample galleries of the old world, I cried 
out, in solemn invocation, " O duty, — duty, that 
hast thy seat in the divine Mind, and art born of 
the everlasting holiness of God, — duty, whose root 
is planted deepest of all things in the soul of man, 
' — bind me, too, and rebind me with thy cords ! Set 
for me, to the end of my life, thy daily stint again, 
and consecrate me to my Maker's service in that of 
my fellow-men ! Yea, rather than all smoothness 
and comfort, lay, I entreat thee, upon my shoulders 
thy rough benediction, if only thou wilt let thy 
peace, that passes understanding, be in my heart ! 
And O love, duty's companion ! before the glories of 
the world, I choose thee. From the ends of the 
earth, I come back to thee. I pray thee inspire 
once more my breast, and set me in thy complete 
circle. I implore thee not to move others' hearts 
towards me, but my heart towards others ; for, 
made to thrill at every sign of good will, and trem- 
ble at every motion of kindness, I know it is not 
safe to be loved, without loving an over-proportion 
in return. Grant me, therefore, thy spring from 



22 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

the infinite Goodness, to be in my bosom, with its 
pure, spontaneous, eternal stream ! " 

Such may be, and doubtless often is, the travel- 
ler's honest feeling, notwithstanding what he leaves 
behind, and sacrifices by his return. Incomparable 
scenery of mountains and gulfs ; matchless build- 
ings, to whose vast solidity all our edifices seem 
ephemeral insect-formations ; works of beauty, in oil 
and marble, to whose standard nothing here makes 
any approach ; natural and artistic lustres gleaming 
out, just glanced at and passed by, — for nobody 
who travels for a few months, though he may boast 
the extent of his course and the many points it has 
taken in, gets more than a glimpse of the inexhaus- 
tible beauty, taking in but as a drop of the sea; 
with many other things of fame, almost within 
grasp, yet unvisited ; beside all the allurements, to 
an intelligent observation, of diverse nations, cus- 
toms, and institutions ; all these things he may 
leave and give up. And he may come to a post of 
severe and unremitting labor. The troop of ardent 
travellers, the merry company at the inn, he may 
forsake for the society of the sick and sorrowful, the 
aged and poor, the troubled and perplexed children 
of men. Beds of disease, coffins dressed for the 
tomb, chambers of mourning, confinement, and 
want, may furnish the scene and the drapery for 
which he exchanges whatever is grand and graceful 
in Tyrolese lakes and Swiss summits, with whatever 
there may be of dignity or gayety to admire or par- 
ticipate in the chief cities of the world ; while 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 23 

almost the only alternation he expects from this 
kind of social occupation may be hewing out, with 
solitary sweat, in patient privacy, for his fellows' 
edification, some little stones from the everlasting 
quarry of truth. "With his first steps in his old 
familiar circle, such things as these may cast no light 
sunny pleasure round him, but sober shadows on 
his brow. Yet to the wisest judgment, there may be 
reason why he should not have one regret to utter, 
or a single complaint to make. Calmly he may 
prefer the task to the pleasure. He may love his 
business more than his entertainment. He may 
magnify his office beyond all the boastings of any 
pilgrimage, though to the very gates of the sun. 
And his home, — oh ! he may set his home above 
all the haunts of strangers and the proudest and 
most eminent sites of the globe. And if asked, as 
he sometimes is, why he has returned so soon, when 
he might have stayed longer abroad, he may ration- 
ally reply, because he did not want to stay any long- 
er ; and that, had he pitched his moving tent, season 
after season, away from his connections of service at 
his station of duty, whatever, in the great system of 
human welfare that station may be, he fears he too 
might have heard the voice that thousands of years 
ago startled the rocky echoes of Mount Horeb, — 
" What doest thou here, Elijah ? " 

Justly to balance my general argument, I must 
not, of course, omit to say, very distinctly, of the 
relative claims of home and travel, that I have con- 
sidered these two as ordinary, continuous modes of 



24: ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

existence. But I am, of course, aware that travel- 
ling is commonly but a rare and brief exception to 
the domestic state ; and that its occasional interval 
in the cares and endeavors of life may, to laborious 
and earnest men, be a season of unspeakable value 
for health, refreshment, instruction, and preparation 
to greater vigor and usefulness. To a quiet and 
affectionate nature, indeed, it is no very pleasing 
thing to be for ever pushing on ; mixing in the 
noise and bustle of hotels ; arranging with agents 
and conveyers ; calculating foreign coinages ; stam- 
mering strange languages ; braving heat and cold, 
rude and stormy weather ; clinging as a perpetual 
appendage to a passport, — although, thank God, 
not in dear old mother England any more than in 
our own precincts; looking after and lifting and 
counting pieces of baggage ; remembering a thou- 
sand things of purely material quality ; a sudden 
unskilful financier binding gold and paper money 
round his body, and having a petty anxiety of detail 
and routine forvever tied to his soul. But all these are 
but the disagreeable means of compassing great and 
precious ends. Those most sensitive to the trouble 
and inconvenience may be most susceptible of the 
benefits ; for suffering often burns lessons deeper than 
they can be impressed by joy. You become a fifth 
wheel to the carriage, worn and bruised and restless, 
in order that you may roll on into beauty and sublimi- 
ty, once seen never to be forgotten ; an inalienable pos- 
session, to delight with unfading charms the memory, 
and stream forth richly into all future days. Well, 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. &5 

in the old Bible, is it said that there is a price for 
knowledge. Rightly to travel is to pay a dear price 
to purchase a great privilege and pleasure, — to be 
taught what might never be communicated by books, 
even the greatest and wisest. The intellectual na- 
ture, long sunk perhaps in the dull rut of mechani- 
cal conduct, receives from it an emancipating shock. 
The whole man experiences a revolution, sundering 
that power of habit which puts a new coil of its 
chain around us with every advancing year. A 
kind of regeneration goes on in his thoughts. 
Weaned from local prejudices and provincial pecu- 
liarities, he may begin a new life of reflection with 
more vivid imagination of his relations, and truer 
devotion to a discharge of the tasks they impose. 
All this, however, provided strictly that to realize it 
be in his aim. If he goes, in the vulgar saying, 
merely to have a good time ; to spend the money no 
charity could ever win from him ; to get rid of the 
load of idleness under which he could not tell what 
to do with himself; to eat and drink, and keep the 
company of the slothful and dissipated; to sit at his 
cups or his cards, while the richest and rarest charms 
wait unregarded without, the ocean tossing, the river 
rolling, the mountain soaring, and picture and statue 
shining to solicit his attention, otherwise engaged, 
in vain, — then is he not furthered, though he 
measure all the parallels, and traverse every meri- 
dian, but substantially the same worthless creature 
everybody knew him before he started. But if he 
have a cultivated sensibility, or what the simple 



%b ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

Scriptures call a seeing eye, a hearing ear, and an 
understanding heart ; if he is taking only a vacation 
from serious duty in temporary absence ; if he re- 
member that, at home or abroad, the first duties of a 
human being remain the same, — to repent of his 
errors and do God's will, and multiply the amount 
of human happiness ; and if, in all his way, he 
seek to be taught their wider fulfilment, — he will 
experience in his entire frame of body and mind an 
extraordinary profit for all coming time. A needless 
giving-up of home to roam the world for self-grati- 
fication evinces only an ungenerous nature, that will 
lose humane moisture at every step. But they who, 
from all their career, gather wealth for their homes 
and their fellow-creatures, — as I am glad to believe 
a considerable proportion of travellers do, — are 
blessed pilgrims and righteous sojourners with them 
of old. 

In fine, therefore, let my readers accept what I 
have here set down, not as a wish to turn the travel- 
ler from his course, but to warn him how he pursues 
it. I have but posted up cautions on a highway 
which must be passed over, and by which excellent 
and precious ends are to be reached. Having passed 
over it, with much to say of what it has revealed, I 
should be sorry to have my friends conclude, at the 
outset of this their visionary journey with me, that I 
was myself led to only profitless conclusions ! No : 
the hermit-age is gone; it is our doom to keep 
moving, and I cannot look with an evil eye on this 
spectacle of the travelling world, which becomes 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. £7 

ever more wide and mighty with each successive 
modern year. Indeed, the best of all reasons, how- 
ever we may speculate, are in the very inclining of 
our nature ; and, if man has a strong and irresistible 
tendency to rest, he has another strong and irresisti- 
ble tendency to motion. The child loves to lie still 
in its mother's arms. But, as soon as it can use its 
limbs, you will see it make earnestly and bravely, 
though tottering, for some object on the nursery- 
floor. This is the beginning and signal of all tra- 
velling : the exact type of the feeling with which, 
in the infancy of the race, the adventurous Phoeni- 
cian steers his bark round the promontory, or the 
Syrian puts forth his caravan across the desert, — 
till upon progress comes intercommunication ; and, 
upon intercommunication, commerce ; and, upon 
commerce, the breaking up of barbarism, and the 
colonizing of remote borders : all that we call civili- 
zation, with wave on wave of influence, finally 
reaching a new world, bringing up to play its part 
the generation we belong to, and wondrously at last 
sending back the pilgrim, who once sought here the 
disclosures of the setting sun, to explore Asiatic 
territories, and find his fortunes in the oriental 
cradle of the race. 

Let me, then, not offend, but rather pay homage 
to, the genius that has so altered and improved fhe 
sphere, and has brought in such wonderful inven- 
tions to serve his purposes, using half the means of 
the race for mere locomotion, to get from one point 
to another, and spreading myriad wings to second in 



%& ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

its flights the winged soul, — for, as Plato reasoned 
and Homer sang, the soul has wings ; and, if it 
crave rest, in the somewhat paradoxical language of 
the Psalmist, it would " fly away, and be at rest." 
So, homage to the genius of science and art, that, 
to its corporeal weight and slowness, adds the pin- 
ions ; nay, in chariots of fire speeds it at its will, 
and on revolving wheels, through opposing wave 
and breeze, bears it on to conquer difficulties in 
token and presage of its universal victory ; drawing 
aid for it by a million threads, without confusion, 
through the circle of the earth ; placing one crea- 
ture in this position and another in that, by hills or 
in valleys, in cities and along shores, as though na- 
ture's own carriage were employed, with a lordlier 
privilege than ever belonged to princes in cars of 
silver and gold, to transport all her offspring to their 
several destinations, with the power of gravity and the 
precision of light. No : I will not insult, but speak 
fair, the rising genius, that I and we all are so 
indebted to ; the genius which, as I am well aware, 
the foremost nations of the world have principally 
cherished and obeyed ; which England so much, and 
now America no less, if not even more, it is said, fol- 
lows. I will not, with any disparagement, call in 
doubt the predominating beneficence, in our age, of 
his reign. Only let the genius allow me to put my 
home first, to prize it beyond all his excursions, and 
return to it, from the ride he gives me, as the settled 
choice for peace and gladness of my soul. Nay, — 
so far from really intending to do any despite to this 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 29 

fine benefactor of the motive force, what is the very- 
thing I here propose but to unfold some of the les- 
sons which, through its mediation, I seem to myself 
to have learned respecting the beauty of the world, 
the achievements of human art, the demonstrations 
of religion, and the nature, history, and destiny of 
mankind ? 

I only in the premises plead that it is not incon- 
sistent with such a design, or any disparagement of 
its importance, for the traveller, like the dove that 
flew over the primeval deep, to rejoice in his return 
to the ark, — the ark of his house, to live and die 
in ; the ark of his church, for prayer and praise ; 
the ark of his country, which, though, like Noah's 
ark and every earthly structure, it contain of all 
kinds, clean and unclean, is yet a refuge and breath- 
ing-spot for wanderers from the whole waste of the 
world ; which feels to the sole of its children's feet 
as does no other soil beneath these covering heavens ; 
and the filial love for which, if it can be increased 
in a true American's bosom, is increased abundantly 
by all he sees in every other nation and kindred and 
tribe and tongue. 

If the present reporter were required to give prac- 
tical counsels respecting the expediency of travel, and 
to say who are the proper persons to set out, — that 
is, to compose a moral guide-book to accompany local 
ones, — he would be happy to contribute his mite of 
counsel, were it likely anybody would take it. But 
the motives in this case do not commonly refer them- 
selves from one man's mind to another's judgment. 

3* 



30 ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

Sometimes the young lad is possessed with the sea : 
old ocean has laid upon him a kind of spell and witch- 
ery which draws him away, and makes the sailor's 
terrible hardships more welcome to him than any 
domestic comforts. Behold, beside, the hosts of those 
younger or older, who are haunted with the vision of 
other climes and nations and the imagined splendors 
of foreign nature and art, so that, at the sight of every 
ship hoisting her sails, their soul flutters to stretch its 
wings, and envies each parting passenger ! It can 
only be said to such, — ' e If no duty holds you back, 
if a desire for improvement more than for pleasure 
move you, if you have learned what your masters can 
teach you, and the wise conclude it is best for you to 
travel, — go in God's name, with God's blessing ! 
But, if you have not disciplined your powers or got 
possession of yourself, go not save under strict guar- 
dianship. If you have never girded up the loins of 
your mind, do not travel ; for this would be like 
setting off with a half-harnessed creature, or upon a 
wheel without a tire, sure to fly to pieces ; and verily 
much of modern travelling is not education, but dis- 
sipation. If you travel merely to indulge a roving 
disposition, you are not only travelling, but living, 
to little purpose. If you go to escape the weight 
of public opinion or the watch of social observation, 
and because you can do in Paris, Vienna, or Rome 
what you would not venture upon in your own neigh- 
borhood, — I need not describe the character of such 
a motive. If you travel to be a better, humbler, 
humaner man, the aim will insure the effect." 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 31 

For the rest, let me hope that these sketches, as a 
kind of ideal journey for my readers, may prove to 
be no waste of their time. In the continental gal- 
leries, as you pass through their splendid halls, you 
will observe many young artists on particular days 
copying the works of the great masters. I have tried 
in my poor words here to copy some of the master- 
pieces of nature and art. Sometimes, to my imagina- 
tion, I confess these memorials look less like pictures 
than like the withered shrubs and leaves which tra- 
vellers pluck from the sides of mountains and streams, 
or famous ruins of towers and towns. Yet even such 
relics are not at home refused as gifts. If I ever 
succeed in conveying a lively image, let it be accepted 
as a picture or photograph ; if my words more often 
are only faint hints and faded specimens, let charity 
consider whether it is always possible to preserve 
any thing more. Above all might it please Him 
whom I own in all my labors to grant to my attempts 
at portraying the beauty he has created or inspired, 
some reflection of the good light of his Spirit ! 

I cannot close this preliminary essay without ex- 
pressing the pleasure I have in enriching my volume 
with an account, by my friend, Dr. I. T. Talbot, of 
this city, of his ascent of Mont Blanc. My gratitude 
will become that of my readers for this very valuable 
addition. The extraordinarily favorable circumstan- 
ces of his expedition have given him an advantage 
not surpassed by any who have ever attempted to 
introduce this great and rare achievement of the tra- 
veller into literature. I believe so fair and good a 



6% ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

description is nowhere else accessible. For my own 
endeavors to disclose the significance of natural 
objects, and bring the meanings of the world into 
correspondence with the powers of the human mind 
and the purposes of life, I could not conceive a better 
completion, or covet a nobler crown. 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 



Behold, — but motes of animated dust, — 
The sons of men upon this whirling ball ! 
Yet to each mote, thou in whom we trust, 
Lord of the sphere so vast ! dost show it all. 

Still brooding over beauty, thou dost bend, 
In thy delight dost our delight intend ; 
Immense the scale, — how graceful still thy work ! 
In smallest things unmeasured grandeurs lurk. 

Tor no fond favors, Father of mankind ! 
We bless thee, but for thine impartial mind : 
Thanks for the equal splendor of the sun ; 
Thanks for thy love to all, respect to none. 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 



It is not strange the Greeks should have given to 
the world " Beauty " for its name. Thank God for 
the proof that he made us for something more than 
a workhouse drudgery, or even the struggles of our 
moral nature ! Some one has said that a conscien- 
tious angel would be a monster; and mortals may 
feel allured by those charms, in the creation, of the 
Divine Spirit, which make goodness no effort, but 
an inspiration of joy. "When we are weary of toil- 
ing, counselling, aspiring, this messenger of beauty 
comes to minister to us, as it may have been 
among those that, after his temptation, refreshed 
the Lord. The wings of prayer itself, long lift- 
ing us, being at last faint with their burthen, let 
us down into the lap of material fairness and grace, 
where nature and the mind seem to hold each other 
in contented contemplation. God has not inserted 
one faculty, such as the devotional, in our frame, 
and trusted to some other lesser creator to add the 
rest ; but has left on all our powers the stamp of his 
Divinity, and made it as pious to admire and purely 



3b BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

enjoy his workmanship as to engage in direct adora- 
tion of his power. How he takes us along the paths 
of his own glory ! Not alone in vehicles of land or 
sea do we journey ; but, exhausted with thought and 
care, we ride upon the shining planetary wheels ; 
sail with wind-borne vapors ; and are invited, as 
little children, to sit with the Almighty in his cha- 
riot of a cloud. Our fancy is playmate with the 
billowings of grassy fields and untired waves ; our 
heart closes upon the winged creature that nestles in 
a flower-cup ; and intellect, with the eye, willingly 
loses its sharpness to sport with shadows, and dream 
over ideal shapes in the morning and evening twi- 
light. 

The most remarkable thing respecting beauty is 
its common and universal character. Beauty is no 
local deity, like the Greek and Roman gods, but 
omnipresent. Its true worshipper beholds it no- 
where insulated, and sets up for it no exclusive 
shrine, because he discerns its unvarying essence 
and immortal sameness through its highest and 
humblest shapes in all the amazing infinitude of its 
variety ; and he that is disposed to confine it in any 
specific dimensions only betrays his coarse and sen- 
sual homage. Glorious side, winning attribute, of 
God, it is absent in no place where we may find 
him. 

Accordingly, its great admirers and celebrators 
have not been those who have run through the uni- 
verse, hunting after it. They have not been vulgar 
sight-seers, hasty perambulators, anxious or ambi- 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 37 

tious explorers of prodigious scenery through every 
nook and corner, peak and gulf, that points or hol- 
lows the globe ; but mostly quiet dwellers in the 
bosom of mother earth, in plain or valley, by hillside 
or shore, wherever the lot of their birth was cast. 
Homer was not enough of a traveller and busy- 
body to be himself distinctly known, but is rather 
an obscure influence of glory out of Greece, the 
luminous core of his country. Shakspeare, going 
from the city to the hedge, lay down in the field 
beside his rustic stream, and saw every thing he 
wanted to see, scarce caring to,, shift his position. If 
we descend in the scale of poets, Cowper culled his 
fresh and tasteful wreaths for immortality within a 
very narrow circle. If we rise to the prince, with 
the crown of nature as well as of empire on his 
head, and, listening to some one of the majestic 
strains with which David's muse makes the world's 
frame ring, then ask, " How came the psalmist to 
be so moved ? whither had he been ; from what 
marvellous scene returned; what tremendous peak 
ascended ; through what black forest wound ; the 
mazes of what glistering cave threaded ; or the roar 
of what awful cataract heard ? " we could get no 
answer more satisfactory than that he might in his 
lifetime have gone so far as to explore the hill-coun- 
try of Judea, to measure the banks of the Jordan, 
to traverse the Sea of Galilee, or roam through the 
woods of Lebanon. There is no proof that what 
are considered the displays of the earth's grandeur 
came within his scope, or were at all requisite to the 

4 



38 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

matchless inspiration of his religious muse. To 
feed his devotions, and fan the fire of his genius, the 
ordinary objects around him quite sufficed: for a 
river, the brook Kedron ; for a spring, Bethesda ; 
for a mount, Olivet ; for a grove, Gethsemane ; — 
such things, with those vast glories of the creation, 
which are open at every point. Enough for him 
that the day dawned, and the golden sun rolled over 
Jerusalem, and the evening twilight, at the western 
gate, thickened, and the stars came and looked in at 
his palace window, and the Almighty sent the winds 
for his messengers, or himself rushed on the chariot 
of the clouds through the heavens. Enough for 
him to mark the spiritual design of this whole mate- 
rial system of things, — to observe how little of it 
is intended for man's bodily use, what a mere parti- 
cle of it can be eaten or worn or occupied, and how 
the whole immeasurable glory exists for the mind. 

So, in general, the splendor of the divine handi- 
work is not unrolled to a few favored or finely situated 
mortals, in the way that a foreign showman some- 
times takes the veil from a piece of marble or canvas 
for a stipulated payment ; but, without money and 
without price, the broad and lustrous majesty of the 
universe revolves full in every, one's view, making 
only that perhaps severest of all demands for an 
eye adjusted to perceive it. The proprietors of spots 
of natural beauty often lock them up from vulgar 
notice ; and, for gain, turn the path to them into a 
toll-gate. Repeatedly, in Great Britain or on the 
Continent, I paid the fees to these singular and mo- 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 6\) 

nopolized charms ; but never found, for the cost and 
pains, the finest exhibitions of God's works. These 
are patent and manifest. Their bountiful Author 
does not hide them away in any corner, or suffer 
anybody to hide them away. The innermost and 
least accessible windings of the shell are not splen- 
didly shaped and colored like its freely open lip. 
So the trade driven in mountains, the revenue 
sought from cataracts and glaciers, can, for the 
most part, touch only the least precious parts of 
nature. The Lord allows no merchandise of buying 
and selling in the real glories of his temple. The 
falls of Schaffhausen, Reichenbach, and Lowdore, 
by their associated interest or intrinsic pleasantness, 
may. reward your purchase-money to the guard ; but 
the wild charms of nature surround with greater 
picturesqueness a thousand undefended spots. Some 
Blackford's Hill may not be ascended without a 
ticket ; and a ludicrous demand for remuneration 
is made for going up a little ledge by a Scottish 
road-side, commanding nothing but what is obvious 
from the level ground. The landlord fences in his 
field so as to conceal some little natural curiosity ; 
but what bolt can be drawn upon Niagara, or the 
mountains of Oregon, or the sea raving round beach 
and crag, or any thing in the great proportions of 
that universal temple, to whose vast glory all exclu- 
sive discourse about one or another natural object, 
which we may have had the privilege to examine, 
indicates an insensibility ! He, who has seen all the 
prodigies of the world, learns that no one feature 



40 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

can equal the entire countenance of nature unveiled 
every morning. Talk of your sparry grotto or 
Mammoth cave ! What is it to that cavern studded 
with heavenly fires; into whose mysterious gloom we 
are every evening led ? To one who, with some- 
thing of the traveller's feeling of superiority, 
boasted to me of the Alps, I queried in reply, 
"But it is not finer than that western sky yonder 
seen from my door-step ? " " You would not think 
so," was the rejoinder, " if you saw the Alps ! " 
Well, as I have seen the Alps, I suppose I may 
now say that the sky is finer. 

On the peak which rises to command, across the 
tremendous vale of Chamouni, the summit of Mont 
Blanc, I beheld the snowy mass of congregated 
peaks, all pure and crystalline, sparkling in a cloud- 
less sun, with majesty not to be surpassed, one 
might think, by the roof even of the New Jerusalem 
in heaven. The monarch of the hills seemed to 
wear an everlasting crown upon him, from which 
no jewel could be struck; in which not a ray of 
lustre, for countless ages, had been quenched. His 
lesser supporters stood motionless about. Mon- 
strous needles of rock — as though foot-guards of 
his dignity — thrust their long lances into the air, 
high almost as the brow of the throned king him- 
self. Enormous glaciers, as grounded arms, glitter- 
ing like steel, lined his seat, and the far-heard rush 
of torrents murmured his applause ; while the occa- 
sional loud crackling of the fathomless ice, in every 
ravine, was a salute to his honor, or a warning 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 41 

against rash approach. It was as though God him- 
self were representing his royalty, and setting up a 
material figure of the King of kings, and I were 
admitted into the ante-chamber to bow and adore 
Him, of whom there is no graven image, through a 
type fashioned by his own hands to help his feeble 
creatures by a ladder, finer than dreaming Jacob 
ever saw, up into heaven. For awhile, entranced in 
the spectacle, fancy climbed up the magnificent stair- 
way of the sovereign's courts, and ran through the 
hollow chambers whose frost-work rang with the 
rapid streams, to light on the top of those sharp 
spears, edged with hail, that leaned towards the 
mountain's head, and then to settle on the hoary 
front of sun-lit splendor that so placidly overlooked 
all. Long was the working of the spell, and late the 
recovery. But shall the spectator himself be al- 
lowed to testify that he awoke but to be carried into 
a nobler trance than that in which the snowy chain 
had held him ? for he awoke to lift his eye from 
earthly heights into celestial depths, the spirit that 
filled which took him to a sublimer fellowship in 
its house without pillars or walls, than he could find 
in the loftiest columns of earth's architecture ; and 
made him feel as if it had been a kind of idolatry 
rather than the purest worship, to be in lesser space 
of finite forms so absorbed. The end of the pil- 
grim's journey could not exceed the beginning. 
The wonderful works of God had been shown him, 
before a wheel turned or sail had been set for his 
conveyance. 



42 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

An enthusiast about Switzerland once said to me 
he should like to die in sight of the Jura. But, if a 
glimpse of the beauty of the creation could soften 
the pangs of death, one might die in peace wherever 
his eye was quickened and anointed to catch the uni- 
versal expression of the face of nature. We need 
not run and hurry after the beauty of the world. 
Nature is an equilateral figure, always equal to 
herself. "Will one say he goes in pursuit of her 
sublimity? That, too, like her grace, is near by, 
asking no long pilgrimage. What in the world 
more magnificent than the tempest that yesterday 
rose and died on the gale farther off than thought 
can follow ! Such a storm was, indeed, set off with 
some special attractions, when, after a sultry day, 
on the hot south-western lee of the Alps, it swept 
down upon me in the village of Meran ; for I 
could see it long and grimly brewing its wrath on 
the high edge of the tremendous amphitheatre. 
Awfully poised it sat, and stretched out wider and 
wider the wings upon which it was to stoop into the 
valley. From the little bridge, which was my sta- 
tion, I could observe where, in previous seasons, the 
demon of the elements had poured down his sudden 
and resistless torrents to flood the vale and tear in 
pieces the very bed and banks of the river, and 
could trace the fortifications of timber and stone 
which the inhabitants had laboriously reared against 
the fresh outbursts of his fury. And now again the 
huge hollow was filling up with threatening gloom. 
But these were accessories, and not the substance. I 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 43 

could well see that no small part of my delight in 
the tempest arose from its essential resemblance to 
all the commotions of nature that had shaken me 
ever since my childhood. It was the same old de- 
mon, as though there were but one storm, breaking 
out repeatedly, in all the world. 

So continually the traveller, who is keen to notice 
facts and his own corresponding sensations, is driven 
back, far more than the peaceful denizen would sup- 
pose, upon ancient experiences. The world becomes 
to him a spinner's wheel, which he watches as the 
little boy does at his industrious mother's side, to 
see a particular mark or color in the band come 
round again. Nature contrives to show her most 
striking points everywhere. We go far to see her 
up-piled rocks and green protuberances, magnificent 
breaks in the monotonous sphere. But the clouds, 
heaped on the horizon, pitching their tents of mea- 
sureless fleecy folds in the suspensions of a summer 
sky, or driving with incalculable fury on the wintry 
blast, exceed any mountains, Chimborazo or Hima- 
laya. It was a scene of terrible impressiveness, 
when, in a storm, towards nightfall, with others I 
walked up that Wengern Alp, whose steep and 
lofty height is yet but a stepping-stone whence to 
view the Jungfrau. The rain dashed slanting like 
successive strokes of a flail. The wind rose in anger 
to blow the feet from their path. Bleak and brown, 
reach after reach of hilly waste ran before. 

" The mists boiled up around me, 
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell" 



44 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

As the vapor shifted or was torn off, the neigh- 
boring cone was revealed, as though rising from a 
stooping posture, and shooting up at the moment 
into the air, miles from its deep base, till, at the 
baring of its gigantic shoulders, I shuddered to 
think any thing earthly could be so high ; and ques- 
tioned by what worldly right or lawful business it 
could so perilously rise ; and still, as the mist rolled 
off, amazingly farther it ascended, and the self-lumi- 
nous head seemed literally piercing the heavens or 
hanging down, an awful apocalypse from above ; 
while, over the broad descents of the mountain, 
that looked as if an arrow from a bow would strike 
it and yet was leagues away, thundering avalanche 
on avalanche, from the smoking batteries of heaven, 
went amain, and smote the ear with their terrific 
crash. It was an astonishing grandeur, heightened 
by fear, even as the mists exaggerate the mountains. 
But yet the pilgrim cannot repeat the common- 
place saying, that he never was so moved before in 
his life. For he remembers the damp whirlwind 
that, almost scores of years ago, weltered by his 
windows, and shook his bed at midnight, and bore 
off his imagination captive on its wings over the 
smitten land and across the raging sea, its birth- 
place, till, as his senses came back, his soul was sub- 
dued into reverence before God, never since more 
simple or profound. 

Many an arousal of the elements, within the 
notice of us all, outstrips in sublimity the most emi- 
nent of those ridges which are the hard bones and 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 45 

rocky joints of the earth. Nor is it the noisy hurtle 
of nature's alarm which truly is most grand. I 
have stood, in a gale, on the vessel's deck, when the 
rigging was as necessary to my support as to that of 
the mast ; and the deep, far as the eye could see, 
was white with rage, save only when some black, 
heaped-up, billowy mass, revolving on its axis, hus- 
tled after our stern to overwhelm the little chip on 
which swam our life. Amazement swallowed up 
terror at the sight. Yet, as I have lain in my berth, 
and, through the little sky -light in the planks above, 
watched the noiseless coming-on of day, beam after 
beam stealing through the thick pane of glass, and 
shadow after shadow within flying off, I knew not 
how or by what exit, till the red lantern, that swung 
near by, had its flame quite put out in the colorless 
rays ; and, as I have reflected how this imponderable, 
mysterious essence was for ever displacing night, and 
building up the arch of day through the hemisphere, 
it has appeared to me a greater phenomenon, mani- 
fest to every eye, than all the yeasty turbulence 
betwixt the ringing shores of the globe. 

Nay, if I may escape a quarrel with the artists 
and poets, I must say that the beautiful, never 
far from us, is more than the sublime, which we 
think to be so rare. The beautiful, the fair, 
expresses God's love ; the wild and sublime, his 
power. The abrupt and broken scenes in nature, 
although they may have more interest to a coarse 
sensibility and a comparatively uncultivated taste, 
are inferior to its undisturbed proportions. What 



46 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

rent or ragged wound in nature can match the blue 
vault, without chasm or seam, — the planetary orbits, 
— the rim of meeting earth and air ? Nay, the close 
observer sees well that the sublimest things them- 
selves are always clothed with a surpassing beauty. 
When the mountain rises beyond a certain point, a 
dazzling robe from the hand of God drops out of 
the sky to smooth every angle, and fill up, with infi- 
nite sweetness of form and hue, every rift. Survey 
the most tempestuous sea, beyond limits and break- 
ers sufficiently far, and it is a wheel within a wheel, ^ 
all rolling without a fault or jar. Could any tornado 
ever do more than obscure for a moment the inimi- 
table painting of the hollow ceiling of our terrestrial 
abode ? The traveller sees marvellous things on his 
journey. I understand it well ; I will be the last to 
contradict it. But he does not come back to tell of 
another sun or a more unfathomable sky than the 
old familiar face and hand of our original timepiece. 
Beauty, unconfined beauty, token of the omnipre- 
sence of God, is the charm, chief, and chosen to each 
justly exercised human soul. The locally monstrous 
and jagged spots, clefts and gulfs, precipices and 
walls, giving signs rougher and more distinct of 
creative strength, are of great use, no doubt, to 
rouse a dormant and stupid nature to some sense it 
may not before have had of the divine agency, and 
gradually train it to appreciate the milder and ever- 
lasting charms in which the Maker evidently most 
delights to be revealed. So he designs. By what 
is dreadful or strange, he fetches us to our knees in 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 47 

worship, that the knees may afterwards, in the pre- 
sence of common and infinite beauty, bend of their 
own accord. The whirlwind and the fire prepare 
us to listen to the still small voice. Our exclama- 
tions of surprise are refined into articulate praise, 
and end in accents of gratitude and love. So the 
enormous exhibitions of nature do not extinguish, 
but rather educate, our esteem, and increase our en- 
joyment of the gentler, which are the main, traits of 
the world. God holds out awful spectacles. But 
he would not leave impressions of terror, or give us 
merely a sense of power ; and therefore, after the 
mountains, he shows us the grass and the flowers. 
"Wonderful is the diversity of objects, and the pecu- 
liar claim of each one. Every scene has its own 
charm. If you will have more of the upland, you 
shall have less of the sky. If the land rises into 
dark, perpendicular walls, elsewhere is the exquisite, 
more precious, sunny slope. After being long pent 
up among mountains, the level ground, with the over- 
hanging atmosphere, pleases beyond fathomless vales 
or ragged defiles. A boundless plain, like that on 
the way to Strasburg, was an infinite delight after 
the jagged Swiss walls and gloomy defiles. Light 
and shade, dancing together, will sometimes play 
tricks, mocking all the attractions of earthly shape 
that boldly demand our regard. I saw nothing 
abroad more sensibly winning and welcome than 
a green field ; passed through nothing more enchant- 
ing than the light ; felt nothing more refreshing 
than the cool and simple air, — the breath of God ; 



48 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

and once, riding in sight of Monte Rosa, towards 
Milan, confessed that the splendor of a calm and 
spotless day was victorious over peak and valley, 
over river and stream, which it yet illustrated and 
enriched with the wondrous alchemy that from the 
barren sand can make scenery finer than chains of 
lakes and ranges of hills under a dull sky. Our 
judgments, like loaded dice, carry in them a bias 
from our childhood, yet a bias not to error but to 
truth, making the beauty of things no matter of 
chance, but of certain reality. Was it not right that 
the boy whom I saw blowing in Savoy, as it were, 
the very same vine-trumpet I blew in my childhood, 
should add a charm for me also to his native fields ? 
Did not the old taste there of the juniper berry better 
define the landscape ? Was it any injustice to the 
Frith of Forth that the purring of my landlady's 
cat made it seem more like home to me ? Or did I 
buy more thanjny money's worth when some fami- 
liarity of bargaining with a stranger carried me so 
back to the village-booth that the transaction was 
no longer as one between the Jews and the Samari- 
tans ? 

It is a vivid illustration of this doctrine, that 
beauty is a spirit and unconfined presence in the 
world; that scenery the most striking does not, to a 
true mind, extinguish the lustre of the mildest. It 
might be thought a visit to Tyrol and Switzerland 
would spoil the Scotch or English lakes and hills of 
all their allurement ; and not a few travellers will be 
quite scornful upon the idea of paying any attention 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 49 

to the latter, after having surveyed the glories of 
the former. But this is a coarse and superficial cri- 
ticism. No one portion of the universe is robbed 
of its peculiar and characteristic beauty by the arro- 
gant intrusion of any other. All contrasts, though 
of the gentlest with the boldest traits, so far from 
diminishing, only enhance, the attractions of nature ; 
and all beholding of beauty, in any shape, but edu- 
cates and renders more keen the sensibility to it in 
every other shape. In the grand portfolio of the 
world are no two pictures alike. He that disdains 
one appreciates none. A cultivated taste may be 
enamored of comparatively obscure as much as of 
famous scenes, as I was told of an intelligent man 
who declared nothing in Switzerland exceeded his 
favorite corner of Wales. So the little, unsophisti- 
cated girl at Trafoi, that ran after me with a blue 
bug, thought she had something in her hand finer 
and more worthy my regard than the awful ice- 
capped Madatsch that overhung her home. 

All our thought of this theme ends in one lesson. 
If the grand things you go far in search of, the falls 
or the hills, open not your mind to the teachings of 
God everywhere, but make you dissatisfied with or 
scornful of common spectacles and ordinary passages 
in the great volume of his works, your visit is fool- 
ish and vain. If the Bernese Alps and the Valley 
of the Rhine took away my enjoyment of Mount 
Holyoke, or made me despise the interval of the 
Nashua, I should think they had done me a most 
unnatural and ungracious turn ; and I would — so 



50 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

God help me ! — repudiate their selfish favor and 
jealous boon. Amid all the ignorance of the older 
nations, the cultivation of a refined taste appears 
more than in our own land. The windows of the 
little villages all through lower Germany, in the 
meanest houses, burst into bloom with the most deli- 
cate and fragrant flowers, hanging down all sorts of 
colors among the hills, as though, amid the unmea- 
sured gorges running between fearful altitudes, were 
the strongest disposition to seize these softer, wider- 
spread types of the gentler qualities of the Deity 
that is over all. With this enjoyment, human despo- 
tism will not interfere, unless the rose or lily or 
pink, with its signature of a heavenly mercy, bear 
also the conventional mark of some concert of an 
oppressed people to strive to win their earthly 
rights. A spring of water is a very ordinary thing. 
But not seldom is the traveller's attention diverted 
from the towering, far-shining heights, by the foun- 
tain visible in any one of a thousand towns, break- 
ing out from those very heights into the centre of 
human habitations ; and drawing, apparently, one by 
one, the whole population, to take the cooling 
draught or fill the pitcher, to wash themselves or 
cleanse their robes ; till the flowing current becomes 
emblem of that fountain of mercy and river of God, 
which, for ever alike inexhaustible and unpolluted, is 
for the refreshment and sanctification of our souls. 

Indeed this is but one illustration of a fact ever 
recurring to the student of nature, that she exists 
less for our entertainment than for our instruction ; 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 51 

not for a picture to trie eye, but for a lesson to the 
soul. Scarce do we scan any object without perus- 
ing this language. The temple not made with 
hands, of which we read in the Bible, is on the 
earth as well as in the heavens. The entire frame 
of nature is often compared to a book. It is a book of 
prayer, a service of praise ; and, be one leaf more 
or less illuminated than another, there is alike im- 
portant meaning on every page. In its cipher, 
traced by the Divine Hand, are legible numberless 
representations of our human lot. I do not venture 
even to name the multitude of those which have 
crossed the line of my observation. With one, how- 
ever, of these moral transits, let me hasten towards 
a conclusion of this essay. 

Far away, alone I ascended a ragged wall of a 
ruined castle on a mountain-side. It was afternoon. 
Light clouds were above, and their dim flying shapes 
cast on the landscape below. Under me ran a 
stream, the river Rhone, spanned with a bridge, 
whose shadow fell on the rippling water. As the 
sun declined, the shadow of the bridge moved 
across the stream. And, lo ! as I looked, the shadow 
of the castle-tower moved after that of the bridge, till 
it overtook and swallowed it up. Then the vast 
shadow of the mountain followed on to overwhelm 
both together in its depth. Anon advanced the 
night apace to cover even the mountain's image on 
the plain beneath. So is it with human life. On 
our childish, trifling pains succeed greater trials, 
disease, disappointment, sorrow ; and the night of 



5£ BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

death sweeps in, and concludes all. But the orb of 
day shall rise again to scatter all earth's shadows ; 
and the morning of eternity will dawn to disperse, 
with never-setting lustre, all our glooms. Is it 
because nature not only gives us a grave, but by 
countless living emblems also promises us a resur- 
rection, that in nature, among her leaves and clods, 
the grave does not look otherwise than beautiful and 
pleasant? The sepulchral vaults, dug under dark 
foundations, to the soul appear horrible and repulsive, 
as though it could never from them get out. But 
the soul does not refuse to lie down where the trees 
shed their glory ; and the parent earth, from whose 
womb we were taken, folds us to sleep once more in 
her lap. Yes, verily, God, the Father of our soul, 
has made even nature, who is but the mother of our 
body, to intimate, in fine, that our connection with 
her fair and glorious scenes is not finished thus ; 
that this hold of the beauty of creation, not with 
our hand but our spirit, is too firm to be by mortal 
decay unloosed ; this religious obligation to remem- 
ber God's works, too binding to be dissolved with 
the dissolving flesh ; this invitation to go on into 
further discoveries of the shining riches of the uni- 
verse, too clear to be withdrawn by Him that gave, 
and is able to make it good. Yes : the Being that 
wrote this spell of unfolding grace and grandeur 
can scarce suffer any minor power to read it back. 
Having inspired, by his infinite doings, the hope of 
endless knowledge, he will not let his promise be 
broken and the victory over his intellectual creature 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 53 

won by a phantom issuing out of darkness and re- 
treating into the pit. No : there is a relationship 
between mind and the matter, shaped into this won- 
derful frame of things. Both are the offspring of 
God. The clothing of one or the other may change, 
wax old as doth a garment, and be folded up. But 
the substance of either is indestructible, though 
the elder-born alone and for ever more can feel and 
rejoice. 



5* 



THE MOUNTAINS. 



Old mountains ' dun and graj ye tiS6 

As oeaseless prayer, earth's Baorifloe i 
Sharing your breath, tho soul adores, 

And with >our soaring summits soars. 

Where Moses taught, where Jesus trod, 

Your tops stand altars unto liod. 

O shapes o( glory, saerod all, 

From overy height heaven's blessings t'all. 

The minaivt-watelunan's punetual ery 

Summons loud worship to the sky : 

Voieetess appeals, t'roiu hhi sent down, 
A million silent throbbiugs own. 



THE MOUNTAINS. 



From general views of tlie beauty of the world, T 
would fain proceed to describe those particular fea- 
tures of it which bave Left on the mind their strong- 
est imprint. liut one consideration occasions a 
doubtful and embarrassing pause, — namely, the 
difficulty, in regard to natural scenery, of interesting 
others in representations whose reality may have 
greatly interested one's self. Lifted to rapture by 
the glories of form and color, by the shifting gpec- 
of life and motion, in the material world, we 
endeavor to convey our experience to others, that 
our transcendent delight may be shared. But, 
whether our language seek their eye or ear, we 
are usually doomed to a mortifying failure. The 
render or hearer remembers a few large expressions 
and poor repetitions, but has not received into his 
imagination the magnificence and variety of the sub- 
jects of our discourse. Wherefore is this ? Why 
is so simple a thing as the face of nature so intrans- 
ferable? J low does the earth-spirit elude our grasp, 



58 THE MOUNTAINS. 

cheat us of the friendly introduction we hoped to 
make, and vanish behind even while we were pro- 
nouncing his name, leaving us with an awkward 
consciousness of but a word in our mouth or a 
phrase from our pen, while the thing, the soul we 
were after, has given us the slip ? Where, in the 
eye or mind, in our frame of body and soul, did the 
glory we would retain and communicate lay hold of 
us ? How does it stay by us so vividly while we 
keep it quietly in our conception ; and yet how be- 
come a blur when we would take it out, as an exhi- 
bitor does his curiosities and prodigies, to show to 
another ? Whatever may be the secret of this sin- 
gular and common disappointment, we must still 
try to tell what we have seen of the marvels of the 
world. Though even more doubtful of success in 
my endeavors to reproduce the impressions of the 
outward world than in the handling of deeper 
themes, yet cannot I avoid a feeling of obligation to 
such endeavors, as I believe it to be the design of 
God, that whatever we see in his wonderful creation 
we should transform into some shape or occasion of 
his love and service. When the worm has eaten the 
mulberry leaf, we demand of it silk. So, if one 
has fed on the beauty of the world, he should ren- 
der back what is more beautiful and enduring than 
itself in ideas for the immortal spirit. If I can suc- 
ceed in associating any instruction with some of the 
main features of the globe which is our dwelling, I 
shall be grateful to Him who has made it our abode, 
and alone enables us to see and do all in it. If 



THE MOUNTAINS. 59 

there are any who will esteem such an attempt a 
mere piece of flowery rhetoric, any so inveterately 
prosaic that they cannot be brought to see in a 
mountain any thing more than a great heap of 
earth, or in a spring of water aught beside a place 
where men and cattle may drink, or in lakes and 
rivers and seas a purpose beyond water-carriage for 
husbandry and trade, to do on a broader scale what 
is clone every day by a garden-sprinkler or a cart in 
the street, — for such I cannot speak, as my words 
will appear to them but visionary folly. 

I begin with the mountains, well of old called 
holy, as, on these lofty heights, there may be more 
than a purer quality of the air, a finer breath for 
the nostrils, even an inspiration for the mind. We 
recognize, indeed, the literal significance of moun- 
tains, and find, even in their vulgar uses, tokens of 
the goodness of God, as the incorruptible sources 
of fountains and streams, as the natural boundaries 
and vantage-grounds for the fortification of king- 
doms, as the efficient regulators of climates, or uj)- 
liftings of the valuable strata and the mineral or 
metallic treasures of the terrestrial abysses ; but let 
us prize them still more, as the altars of the Most 
High, the immemorial shrines of freedom and reli- 
gion. A moment's thought will show the figure 
they make, the grand part they play, all through the 
vast spaces spanned by the heavenly revelations ; 
from the mountains of Horeb and Sinai, in Arabia 
Petraea, where, in thunders and lightnings, came 
down the everlasting law ; and Ebal and Gerizim, 



60 THE MOUNTAINS. 

between whose opposite peaks, out of the mouths 
of millions of Hebrews, rang to and fro alternate 
blessings and cursings for those who should keep or 
break the commandments ; and Moriah, where the 
temple was built ; and Carmel and Gilboa and Gilead 
and Hermon and Lebanon, and many beside, conse- 
crated with some special interest of manifestation 
from above or worship of the Almighty ; and Zion, 
which gave a name to the holy city and to the Chris- 
tian church, down to the mount which Christ made 
his pulpit for the sublimest of sermons, still the 
supreme and never to be obsolete guide of mankind. 
What but the unearthly sinlessness, the divine and 
aspiring nature, of Him who came to redeem and 
exalt our race, made him so fondly seek, so almost 
tend to, the mountains of Judea, leaving the low val- 
leys and dead levels of the world behind, and wiping 
the dust from his sandals on the soaring summits in 
whose welcome solitude he could, undisturbed, com- 
mune with God? It was a mountain where he 
preached ; it was a mountain where he was trans- 
figured ; it was a mountain where he was crucified ; 
it was a mountain from which he ascended, when 
he had eaten the passover with his disciples, and in- 
stituted the ordinance of the supper, and sung his 
last hymn on earth, — as though then he could 
breathe only the upper air, into whose rarer sanctity 
he was so soon to be translated. He went into the 
Mount of Olives ; and Olivet and Tabor and Calva- 
ry, with Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Micah, the hills them- 
selves, with the seers that celebrate them, call upon 



THE MOUNTAINS. 61 

us from afar, if not with our feet, yet with our heart 
and imagination, to go up into the mountain of the 
Lord. Who can think of the Saviour's own spirit 
but as at an unearthly elevation? 

It would be an absurd proposition, for very laugh- 
ter, to affirm the need of literally ascending a moun- 
tain to be spiritually-minded. The coarse and impi- 
ous man might stand on the altitudes of the globe, 
and be coarse and impious still ; though an oath, or 
jest, or indecent action, — everywhere out of place, 
— there jars upon one with especial harshness, as if 
it were the desecration of a temple. It were super- 
fluous to add that a man may abide in the plain, and 
yet do lofty deeds all his life long ; — though the 
mountains will probably come into his mind and do 
something, as natural emblems and helps, for which 
God planted them, to prompt his magnanimity. But 
laborious muscular toil, or the flight of a balloon, is 
not the only way in which a human creature can 
avail himself of this outward furtherance to rise. 
In the bare knowledge every one has of the exist- 
ence of the mountains, which it has pleased God for 
more than a physical purpose to root in the ground 
and lift to the skies, in recalling the opportunity 
almost every one may have at times in his life to rest 
on some of their glorious heads, — in the fancy, at 
least, and reflective understanding, of these emi- 
nences of strength, in which the earth itself, in ten 
thousand places, seems going up into the heavens 
with adoration, as if it too, though dumb and 
though senseless, must fain pay homage to its Ma- 

G 



62 THE MOUNTAINS. 

ker, — every rational being may find aid to his devo- 
tions, and keep the mountains in view, in his mind's 
eye, enough to appreciate the language of Holy 
Writ, to sympathize with Noah upon Ararat, and 
Abraham in his sacrifice at Jehovah-Jireh, and 
Moses upon Pisgah, looking towards Canaan, and 
David and Jesus upon the hill-tops round about 
Jerusalem, in which the spirit of praise in the Old 
Testament finds an emblem of the providence with 
which the Lord is for ever round about his people. 
When David himself wrote his immortal odes, to 
stir his own countrymen, and to be versified for our 
praise, he was not actually on the mountains, but in 
his palace-study, thinking of them with the ecstasy 
of religious emotion which they supplied. In these 
marked gradations of the soil from beneath upward, 
so naturally raising our looks and turning them to 
the celestial regions ; in the ridge that commonly, 
wherever we look, makes the horizon; in swells of 
land, that are never, except from the prairies and 
deserts, far away, God has, of set purpose, provided 
a gracious assistance to our thoughts, and furnished 
a ladder on which they may mount and lose them- 
selves in contemplation of his invisible glory ; and 
this is the first reason and great final cause of his 
" setting fast the mountains." 

We abide too much below. Many seem scarce 
ever deigning to look into the sky. Our eyes are 
directed downward, like Mammon's, in the poet's 
picture, gazing at the golden pavement of the hea- 
venly floor. We are too intent on the cares of earthly 



THE MOUNTAINS. 63 

business and sublunary gain, peering round to see 
what we can pick up of profit or gather of sensual 
delight, too seldom and too faintly glancing above to 
search after the unfading riches. It would be well 
if the preacher, instead of dwelling so much in the 
mazes of metaphysical theology, would oftener call 
upon the mountains to stand in his stead, and sum- 
mon the hills to second his exhortation, that their 
everlasting strength may back up his weakness, and 
their superior invitations prevail to lead his flock 
over their sides after the great Shepherd. If the 
mountains will come at the adjuration, and, for such 
an office, marshal themselves, they will serve again 
an end as blessed as when, at the joyful going-out of 
Israel from the bondage of Egypt, the Psalmist tells 
us, " The mountains skipped like rams, and the little 
hills like lambs." 

There are, truly, various ways of quickening the 
sentiment of reverence in our bosoms ; but perhaps, 
for most persons, the principal stimulus in the ex- 
ternal universe may be derived from those mighty 
uprisen masses which at so many points break the 
smoothness of our planet, and, after the sea that 
drowns most of its surface, stamp it with its most 
characteristic traits, — indeed are the signal of com- 
motions in the land more tremendous than ever shook 
the watery deep, and have tossed the soil into mon- 
strous billows, stiffening in their shape ; so that, even 
among the lesser heights and furrows of the globe, 
to one gazing from a central station, the appearance 
of the ground, far as the eye can reach, is of the 



64 THE MOUNTAINS. 

most terrific of stormy seas. But more solemn still 
and awe-inspiring is the disclosure to one who, 
in such a country as Switzerland, containing some 
of the most remarkable elevations in the world, 
selects for his ascent some mountain which will 
afford a convenient post for observation. With every 
step, as he rises, his prospect widens, heightens, and 
deepens ; the valleys open more and more their 
curving sides and their hollow immensity ; the hills 
heave up more and more their broad backs, and 
unveil their horrid fronts, seamed with frightful 
chasms. Here furious torrents dash through cavern- 
ous glooms ; there threatening rocks impend on 
the sides of ancient channels, or lodge in the bottom 
of long dried-up beds. The sheep, that were specks 
of white, upon the declivity, in your vision, when 
you started, at length, as you turn on some winding 
of your path, are beheld far below. Only the goats, 
at a cautious remoteness, continue to be your fellow- 
travellers, clambering with you on the same plane of 
elevation, or the chamois bound still above. And 
lo ! now, as yet you persevere, a spectacle strange and 
sudden, which, when I saw it, smote me with one of 
the most singular and never-to-be-forgotten thrills 
of exultation, that can be felt even from the majestic 
works of God. White fingers of snow, afar, one 
after another, slowly thrust themselves into the sky 
as I advanced ; the fine extremities of distant moun- 
tains, of the Bernese Alps on one side, or the range 
of Mont Blanc on the other, — more and more of the 
slender tapering lines revealing themselves in spot- 



THE MOUNTAINS. 65 

less branches of purity, pointing skyward, as though 
the hills themselves were holding up their hands in 
everlasting homage to the Lord of heaven and earth 
which they united. Ay, let us lift up our eyes to 
the hills, for they will lift us into the heavens. Let 
us tread on them, for they are steps into the infinite 
glory. "Well might the conscious soul join in wor- 
ship of the Power which, with ease incomprehensi- 
ble, had fixed every base, and measured each girth 
of the gigantic peaks, and rounded to its apex every 
unblemished pillar, bright with eternal frost, that 
sparkles, but never melts, in the dazzling sun. Glan- 
cing back through memory's light, every cone seems 
to turn, mystically, to a silver candlestick, answering, 
with mighty enlargement, to the golden ones Solo- 
mon made for the house of the Lord. 

The mere geographer or political economist, gaz- 
ing at our Sierra Nevada, or at the multitudinous 
Alpine ranks, to which a whole country seems given 
up, might pass over the scene with a slighting sen- 
tence upon its barrenness and unfitness for tillage, or 
even ask, What is such a territory for ? and to what 
purpose was it made ? But, to a devout discernment, 
the rugged, fruitless landscape, with its uninhabitable 
precipices and enormous gashes, will appear rich 
with those harvests of revering sentiment that root 
themselves and flourish there, to which the most 
precious and abundant products of luxuriant meadows 
and fertile vales are as inferior in value as the 
perishable body is inferior to the undying soul. 
Let, then, no such doubt or question of their utility 



66 THE MOUNTAINS. 

intrude impiously into the counsels of the Most 
High. If the fortresses built upon the sides of 
mountains have converted them to one of their 
worldly uses, the convents for prayer and pilgrimage, 
and protection to the spent and wandering traveller, 
have been the discovery of a nobler use ; and I could 
not help feeling that the family party I met journey- 
ing, with prayers audible on the lips of parents, and 
repeated by the children, miles up towards a pure 
and cool fountain, were in a frame fitter to the situa- 
tion than any seekers of the same grandeur for mere 
novelty and pleasure. Ah ! the fairest of the wild- 
flowers that grow in the horrid ravines are the feel- 
ings of veneration and confidence towards the Author 
of the world. And it is a satisfaction to notice that 
most men in mountains own a dignity suited to the 
higher order of their affections, human or divine, 
and consecrate them as the retreats of freedom no 
less than as shrines of prayer. So, with a worthy 
patriotic zeal, we call the loftiest of our New Eng- 
land summits Mount Washington, and entitle the 
surrounding heights with the names of his great 
compeers. Indeed, it is not in the absolute external 
magnitude of the mountain that its real glory most 
consists, but in the displays of power and mercy 
from the Deity, or the exercises of the revering soul, 
of which it may have been made the theatre. The 
crest of Sinai, on the geometric scale, sinks under 
the line of many a mountain chain. Olivet is 
scarcely more than a considerable hill, and Calvary 
but a gentle undulation ; but, in our wonder and 



THE MOUNTAINS. 67 

love, do they not overtop Chimborazo and Himalaya, 
with all the other summits of the earth ? 

But, beyond these general reflections, must be 
considered more especially the place which the 
mountains occupy on our sphere. After the sea, 
which is hardly so much a feature as it is a rival 
of the globe, — a sort of watery, opposed to the 
earthy, pole of the planet, — the mountains are cer- 
tainly the most striking portion of the planet. They 
are the most unaltered part of the world; or they 
alter, but as they rose, from wasting floods or central 
fires. The rule of art they alone resist. Here and 
there, a very small mountain or hill may be tun- 
nelled, or some frowning gorge magnificently neck- 
laced with a pathway, whose steps and turns we 
may count afar like beads ; or the bowels of huge 
summits may be laid open to reach some of those 
minerals which have loved to trust these elevations 
for the chambers of their riches, or to pierce them 
with their veins ; but the great upheaved masses of 
earth remain substantially from age to age the same. 
This may be one source of the pleasure we take in 
visiting them, that we come at last to fresh, rude, 
sincere nature. They have not been run into any 
human mould, varnished, smoothed, or trimmed ; 
and we gaze on their forms with a feeling akin to 
that with which we regard the wild beast, whose 
body is gaunt with the fare of the desert, and whose 
mane is- unshorn. From cultivated, sleek, and glossy 
life, we go with irresistible impulse into gloomy and 
savage scenes ; while, for this craving to escape an 



68 THE MOUNTAINS. 

artificial existence, and be refreshed with barbarous 
and original force, the Creator has made large pro- 
vision. Look at such a country as Switzerland ! 
It seems to be the only place, in the midst of human 
civilization, not encroached upon, and submerged in 
the tide of human activity. Well nigh it holds its 
own. Against the inroads of the universal con- 
queror, it stands out unsubdued, one teaching of 
humility to him who is made lord over the works 
of God's hands. The railway, winding like a ser- 
pent through the sand and into crevices of the rock, 
stops short everywhere at a respectful distance from 
this material majesty. The carriage, rising higher 
and penetrating deeper, at length refuses to proceed. 
The horse and the mule advance with their burden, 
or a litter for the weak is borne in hands ; but many 
a peak and cave can be reached only by the solitary 
human foot, which, after the wing of the bird, is, in 
the world, the most superior traveller. He who looks 
at a raised map, accurately representing the altitudes 
and depressions of this singular country, and can then 
make a solar microscope of his imagination properly 
to magnify it, may understand the compass of gran- 
deur embraced in what horizontally would be a small 
territory. The Scotchman, disputing with his Eng- 
lish friend upon the endless theme of the rival 
merits of their respective countries, being at last 
asked if he would not own so much as this, that 
England was geographically a bigger country than 
Scotland, replied, that he doubted it, if the hills were 
all rolled out! The scenes of Swiss beauty and 






THE MOUNTAINS. 69 

sublimity, covering thus, as they do, a really vast, 
though folded and wrinkled, surface, seem inex- 
haustible. The traveller's guide-books for this region, 
like descriptive catalogues of pictures, blaze with an 
actual confusion of splendor. The whole vocabulary 
of picturesqueness is used up and consumed. The 
talkative and serviceable guide adds his homelier, 
perhaps juster and more expressive, diction. Your 
own eyesight then comes to make all the speech and 
literature of the subject utterly vain and forgotten, 
and to give you in the recollection no feeling but of 
shame in any thing you may yourself be able to 
report. One or another peculiar situation, pass or 
peak, range of heights or vales, possesses the fancy 
of one or another pilgrim, and conquers him, as a 
mistress her lover, to itself; and he maintains, as 
if it were a personal matter, like the espoused 
quarrel of a friend, that there is nothing beside to 
compare with that ; till, like the stars in their 
courses, according to the sublime declaration of the 
prophet, the mountains fight for their favorites with 
one another. Rivalries so splendid, each one with 
claims so enormous, who shall settle and compose ? 
What a hint they give of those treasures of beauty 
among his works it has pleased the wealthy Father 
to scatter, for every one of his children to own as 
much as he can appreciate ! 

I can attempt to transfer from the catalogue of 
memory only those pictures which I owe to my own 
affinities, and to my being in the way of the original 
masterpieces. Already, in speaking more generally 



70 THE MOUNTAINS. 

of the beauty of the world, I have given some 
sketches. "What I offer further on a topic so co- 
pious, is with the more special design of translating, 
if I may so speak, the mountains into their language 
and meaning. I undertake this with trembling 
diffidence. Reverently I enter into the company of 
these magnates of matter, — these makers of winds 
and storms, and climates and streams, — these de- 
fenders of their own brave inhabitants, who have 
often enlisted their rocks and heights into the lines 
of their soldiery, as they resisted invasions of their 
country by a foreign foe. How little, of all I dimly 
conceive, I expect to be able to impart! how little 
of it, perhaps, I even saw and understood ! He who 
supposes he is fond of lofty scenery, while he him- 
self is low in his thoughts, labors under a fatal 
mistake. Meanness in imagination and conduct 
has no harmony with sublimity even in material 
things. The glories of nature contradict, and hide 
from the degradations of the soul, as the innocent 
birds fly away from anger and noise. A man of 
grovelling tendencies, however acute in intellect, 
will comprehend only the coarser passages of Shak- 
speare ; and it is only a gross and superficial 
satisfaction which the self-indulgent lover of plea- 
sure can find in the creation of God. Nay, even of 
his poor sensuous delight such a one will soon 
weary, and find all the charms of nature insufficient 
to arouse him. Mountain and river, field and wood, 
will pall upon the intellectual taste of a man whose 
soul is ruled by base desires. He may have the 



THE MOUNTAINS. 71 

whole world for his appetite ; but he will eat his own 
heart. 

In a range of observation from Ben Lomond, in 
Scotland, to the Carpathian Hills, it is difficult to 
select among many significant views. In memory, 
the hills arrange themselves as a glorious stairway, 
leading up the earth's chambers to heaven, which 
one would gladly have the company of friends in re- 
mounting. The first decided step is at Heidelberg. 
How shall I describe the welcome which, weary 
from a long journey on a warm, sunny afternoon, we 
received from this mountain-nook ? What soft arms 
it stretched toward us ! How all the circling heights 
seemed to unite in their invitation to us : " Here lie 
down and repose ! Lo ! we have shut out the turbu- 
lent and restless world, and the Lord has appointed 
this nest of our bosom for your protection and re- 
freshment for new toils. Come to take the blessing, 
and give the thanks ! " Even like the rose of 
Sharon and the lily of the valley in the Song 
of Solomon, they said, " Our bed is green : the 
beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of 
fir." And truly did we rest . our souls, while our 
eyes were never weary of moving up and down the 
charming slopes of the surrounding upland. The 
town, the university, the castle of Heidelberg, I 
leave. They are too familiar in the pages of guide- 
books and in travellers' descriptions for me to 
sketch them, even did my purpose here allow me 
to speak of any thing but ascending the highest 
elevation of the Konigstuhl, or King's Seat. In 



7£ THE MOUNTAINS. 

company with a brave and never-fatigued member 
of our party, I went to the top of the hill and 
tower for a view of the delicious valleys of the 
Rhine and Neckar, of the profiles of neighboring 
mountains, and the grim edges of far-off forests ; 
while in the foreground rolled shining trains of 
cars, whose motion, so observed from above, adds I 
know not what charm of humanity, or progress in 
knowledge and comfort, to set off the wildest traits 
of nature. 

The next step, horizontally long, as from a landing- 
place, is vertically short, to a hill called Kolobrats, 
in the vicinity of the sprightly Tyrolese village of 
Ischl, which, dwarfed, as all buildings of man are, 
amid the grand features of the world, seems like a 
puny creature that has crept for refuge into a crevice 
of the wall. On the brow of a hill, near to the one 
we ascended, a half-witted girl had offered us berries, 
which, for charity, we bought. As she noticed we 
did not at once consume them, she said, very patheti- 
cally, " Will you not eat ? " as though she feared we 
had purchased them for her sake rather than for our 
own. Her remaining with me so much, as the spirit 
of the rude scene, a sort of incarnation of the moun- 
tain, has made my pencil glance for this one touch 
of her likeness. I should not dwell on the ascent 
of Kolobrats but for the interest and meaning of 
one incident. On our way up, we noticed, scattered 
thinly, at wide spaces apart, amid the greenness of 
the remote mountains, and even quite low upon their 
sides, various light-colored patches or projections, 



THE MOUNTAINS. 73 

the nature of which became the subject of debate. 
"We agreed that they looked like snow ; but it hardly 
seemed possible that snow should exist, in July, in 
such situations. So one and another concluded that 
the appearances must be masses of granite or the 
shine of huge heaps of quartz. The youngest of 
our party, from the first of this quite-protracted 
controversy, stoutly maintained, against much mer- 
ciless ridicule, that it verily was snow, however 
self-satisfied any one might be that the frost-king 
could not thrust the signals of his dominion so 
steadily into the richest growth and among the most 
smiling sunbeams of nature. The lofty summit, 
which we at length reached, made a revelation like 
some of St. John's. It showed indeed the correct- 
ness of the child's apprehensions, in a spectacle of 
glistening ice and snow, from the front-guard of the 
south-eastern Alps, in some respects finer than any 
similar sight among thousands afterwards attained. 
That pile of unquestionable virgin purity, — descend- 
ed from heaven, in the vast, clear glimmer of its 
crown, showed tints unlike any thing else ever before 
beheld. It had something of the peculiar lustrous 
light that appears in the cleavage of crystals. At 
times it showed itself as a huge opal in the varying 
light and shade. What can it be ? I asked my- 
self. Does mere frozen water play such tricks, or 
can it reach to such far-piercing and delicately- 
changing splendor ? What piece of the chalcedony 
or chrysoprase has fallen down to earth out of the 
foundations of the walls of the celestial city ? Yes, 

7 



74 THE MOUNTAINS. 

the child was right ! It was a spotless congelation, 
extending its tokens and tributes down even towards 
the green and sunny plains. Forth afterwards I 
fared in my journey to see glaciers, magnificent and 
immense, — cold, white pinnacles, and domes of ever- 
lasting winter's sway, whole mountains given up to 
frost as much as are the poles of the earth : as those 
poles they seemed to be, set upright in the air. 
But I saw nothing that took my soul with a sweeter 
wonder, or left in it a more lasting image, than this 
first sight of the unblemished meeting of heaven 
and earth. We had battled stoutly about its reality. 
So we dispute about the reality of things in the 
spiritual world. One gives the same object a hard 
name, which another calls by a soft one. What is 
purity or generosity to one, may aj3pear like selfish- 
ness or corruption to the perhaps evil eye of another. 
Even among deep calculators, fine reasoners, ex- 
perienced and most confident wiseacres, all that is 
fair and glorious is called in question. Meanwhile 
comes along a child, with his keen senses and un- 
sophisticated discernment, and points out to us the 
very doors of heaven. 

The next step upon the mountain-ladder was to 
the top of the Patscherkofel, near Innsbruck, a town 
whose natural beauty is unsurpassed in all Germany, 
save perhaps by that of Salzburg, being hid away 
among heights, now tender with moss, and now awful 
with crag and precipice. Like monsters, that might 
come and look in upon one's sleep in the wilderness, 
so the encircling hills intrude their forms and sha- 



THE MOUNTAINS. 75 

dows as your eye looks from the window of your 
lodging ; for a great and sharp elevation of land 
makes what is considerably distant look appallingly 
near. The view from the Patscherkofel is, in its 
peculiar attractions, unrivalled ; commanding, as it 
does, to a distance at which the eyesight gradually 
fails, and the magnifying glass must be used for an 
aid, several enormous valleys, with their rocks and 
streams and glaciers. In these huge ledges, I could 
not help thinking that the solid framework of the 
world, so beautifully invested, was laid bare, and 
that we traced, as it were, the bony processes of the 
creation. If, according to the antique theology, the 
fashioning of the globe was intrusted to some infe- 
rior deity or demon, verily we saw where the earth- 
spirit wrought lustily in the grooves and insertions 
of his work. Commonly the view of a mountain is 
finer than the view from it ; and to make it a post of 
observation is to lose sight of itself. But the dis- 
closure of these measureless hollows, scooped by the 
almighty Maker for the channels of his rivers to 
water the globe, while it drew down the eye, at the 
same time exalted the soul. I had before wondered 
at the valley-views near Mount Washington ; they 
were but as the miniature of these. At a point about 
two-thirds of the way to the summit of the moun- 
tain is the most clear and delightful of springs, 
called Heiligenwasser, or Holy Water, — resorted to 
as a Catholic shrine, — a draught of which one of 
any religion might accompany with grateful and 
adoring thoughts of the Great Spirit who pours out 



76 THE MOUNTAINS. 

his purity alike in material symbols and channels of 
grace. 

To this valley-view, not violating the method of 
showing the mountains and what pertains to them, 
let me add the prospect of that immense plain which 
stretches on from Martigny towards the Simplon, 
and is traversed by the Rhone. I went up a seldom 
ascended mountain to obtain this outlook, — seldom 
ascended, I take for granted ; for, with some practice 
as a cragsman in earlier years, it was with great diffi- 
culty, and no trifling danger of slipping and rolling 
down the almost perpendicular steep, that I pushed 
my foot into the ground, to hold as by a claw, 
and wound up my way. My compensation was to 
see, laid out in regular proportions, one of the cham- 
bers of God's house, having room within its pillars 
and upon its spacious floor for a thousand cities. 

But, after many wearisome ascents, one is satisfied 
with gazing from mountains while still eager to gaze 
at them, and fill the imagination with the various 
sublimity of their shapes near in sight. This gives 
the chief interest to the passes, of which there are 
about fifty principal ones in Switzerland alone. 
They not only let the traveller through from town to 
town, and kingdom to kingdom ; but, beyond all 
other vantage-grounds, they introduce him to the 
glory of the mountains they divide on their way. 
Through some of them I must ask my readers to be 
my fellow-pilgrims. 

I take first the Great St. Bernard ; not only for its 
fame, but because so much less than in some others — 



THE MOUNTAINS. 77 

as, for example, the Stelvio — has the wildness of 
nature been relieved by the magnificent helps of art. 
But in this, as in the other passes, one is struck with 
the thought that God never builds up in the world 
an insuperable wall, but provides everywhere for his 
creatures an exit, — some way of escape. As the 
Notch of our own White Hills is said to be the 
only available passage for long distances either way, 
and seems to be a road laid out on purpose by the 
Creator, so, everywhere, the terrible ramparts of 
matter have something like a ladder of ropes thrown 
over them, or a channel worn through. But the 
exact direction and the particular steps of safety are 
not at once or easily found. Indeed, what are the 
very associations that immediately cluster about that 
name, the Great St. Bernard, but of danger and un- 
told agony for countless exposed or perishing way- 
farers ? Let not the reflection appear untimely ; but 
one can scarce help being reminded of the proud 
pretensions of those who imagine they can make 
their way through the certainly not less intricate 
spiritual world of thought and human life unaided 
and alone. To a superficial fancy, indeed, easy 
seems the material as well as spiritual career. Wide 
and deep from the valley of the Rhone opens the 
solemn door of the pass as for an army to march 
along. Brooks and flowers cheer the onward course ; 
but brown, bleak wastes succeed, over whose swell- 
ing reaches no surveyor's chain has been stretched, 
and in which the solitary man is speedily bewildered ; 
while the mid-summer snow, which farther along 

7* 



78 THE MOUNTAINS. 

crunches under the traveller's foot, in winter drops 
itself down on every side, and spreads its fathomless 
thickness abroad, — one endless snare and sepulchre. 
Can we get along better through our doubts and 
sorrows and sins, than through these snows and 
woods and precipices ? So asks and thinks and sighs 
the pilgrim, as, hour after hour, he troops along. 
Thank God for guides, — guides through the deserts 
of nature and of our own minds, — especially for the 
great Guide of all ! But, while feeling in such cir- 
cumstances, what every analogy shows, the insuffi- 
cient lisrht for either world of nature and individual 

o 

reason, one feels also in these dreary and terrific 
scenes, as nowhere else, the distinction of mind, and 
its superiority to matter. Over this sharp edge, 
down that grim pitfall, in yonder foaming tide, how 
soon my life might be lost ! Yet more than crag or 
cave or torrent, which in a moment could take that 
life, yea, infinitely more than the thoughtless and 
insensible mountain that seeks to rest its inaccessible 
head in the skies, is the perception, the will, the 
love, in my slender bosom. It is an amazing journey ; 
but the sign of human life, of a moral and religious 
nature, in the Monk's Hospice, at the top of the 
pass, exceeds all the material glory around and 
below. Our going through the Pass of the Stelvio, 
in Tyrol, an account of which belongs properly 
to another connection, showed us a range of snowy 
mountain-crowns, perhaps as fine as any that opens 
upon the traveller's road in Switzerland, and espe- 
cially disclosed one phenomenon I saw nowhere else, 



THE MOUNTAINS. 79 

certainly, in such perfection, — a blowing, for long 
spaces of time, of the white, powdery snow about 
the topmost points, in the exact shape of those little 
whirlwinds of dust we sometimes see in the street, 
only that the spotless purity of the particles and the 
amazing distance made these lofty eddyings sub- 
lime. 

The Pass of the Spliigen, in the Alps, stands 
alone in the ghastly grandeur of the Via Mala, or 
Evil Way, where, betwixt opposing precipices, in 
some places nearly a third of a mile in height, and 
often only a few yards apart, extending through a 
space of more than four miles, the most wonderful 
engineering has built a road along gulfs, which it 
might be thought possible to span with nothing 
larger than a thread in the mouth of a carrier-dove. 
If I may compare with it another scene, the enor- 
mous wall, beside which, near Ragatz, one approaches 
the celebrated Pfeffer Baths, looks, in remembrance, 
as if it might be one of these jagged masses in the 
cleft of the Spliigen civilized and reduced. Hardly 
can there be elsewhere in the world a w T alk of more 
tremendous interest, more dwarfing in his own eyes 
the physical man, than that through these four 
miles, with its eyries, beyond the goat's clambering, 
far overhead, and the scarce seen Rhine, condensed 
between the descending rocks, and, as it were, 
turned edgew r ise to the eye, to tinkle far below. 
Surely we can, at length, pass anywhere, out of 
whatsoever difficulty, if we have been able to pass 
here. We can execute the most ideal plans for 



80 THE MOUNTAINS. 

human progress and welfare, after being let through 
these horrid crags. Such lesson might not a re- 
former learn from the Pass of the Spliigen ? The 
sword of the Lord, that has cloven the mountain, 
may cleave the oppositions of the heart. Going 
through the passes one's self, with all the helps of 
modern engineering, fills the mind with wonder how 
Hannibal and Napoleon made their unassisted way. 
"Wherefore were they not discouraged by these end- 
less upheavings of the ground, one reached only to 
reveal another, till it seems as if there really is no 
top, but the steps go on for ever into the sky ? Ah ! 
these men carried the top in their mind, and ap- 
peared scarce dependent on the consideration, 
whether there were any top in nature or not ; as 
the Genoese prophet of this New "World kept 
bravely on, though his crew questioned if the ocean 
indeed had another side. 

In a pilgrim's recollection, the line from Lungern 
to Lauterbrunnen, running through woods, down 
steeps, and over hills, seems altogether one magnifi- 
cent pass. The unsurpassed vale of Meyringen, 
fringed with the alternate green of trees and white 
of waterfalls ; Grindelwald, with its huge circlet 
of mountains and its shining ornaments of glaciers, 
especially the glacier of Rosenlaui, purest of all its fel- 
lows, opening its dripping, inner rooms, that sparkle 
with beryl and ruby tints ; the Scheideck, Faulhorn, 
Wengern Alp, Bernese Alps, — how much is there 
here, not for lame description, but for thrilling sight ! 
Let me speak only of the descent to Lauterbrunnen, 






which means eltar springs, or cmiy sprimgs. Xowhere 

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szizzir ~~ "~ ~--- : ~ Lz~: '■- rVzrf^. i-rz.-r. I: ^"j^i 
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lzi zizzzzizz.zi :: ::= zurz" z^zz *rz; — ;- :;_■= 
upper dries they come horn, these liquid glaciers 
oTr ::.;:rl z- :z: zzzz :l-rj ~rzi*T — -:v :!■= -:..! :ze=. 
— . 

— 
tlr" :i-z. lii:-= zz r~-r:I zzr zzzzi::.:! iizz>zz. z- ::' 
:1^7 : :r-= :z :zrz: etlzzzze :zr "-.7 : 1-77 :: Nz: :r^H 
souL and would cleans :tam from her visible 

SizzVzaAj about the sixth o£ a 
ii„t zz ZrLzzz izi I: . -zzz z- :;' :: — t- -; zz i 11 
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M---r :■: ; _• . . ::z::.-z. _ z.. 1 :it :.:^ ^z; :: -;zz- 
; . . ; . - .r -.-:- rr. \z- zzz zzz 1- z~~; 

up and down, keep to and fro. their incessant 
ll:z:z: zzi izll ::' :z~ iri -7:^:: z:z zl - .-- ze 
--r — z: i:-r= z;: zzz 1 ~~ - 7 :z zz zzz - ::zz^ ;•:' 
z::rzzz". :^z- ; . zz. i:zzz". ::: - Lz-- . 

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Z1Z i.~Z_i_ Z. _ Z — "- LZ i :7rZZrZlZ- 



OX, THE MOUNTAINS. 

— into our very hearts. There were finer echoes too, 
in which nature and art shared, from the blowing 
of long, wooden horns, in chosen spots, against the 
sides of the mountains. The sweetness of that 
melody, in which the breath of man was the plec- 
trum, and the far-off frightful lines and seams of 
eternal rock the harpstrings, can be no more than 
hinted to any by whom it has not been heard. 
What strange softness mixed with what metallic 
brilliance ! "What notes from unearthly distance 
brought so distinct and near ! What even roughest 
and most unmusical blast from below returned out of 
heaven smooth as the dewy air, like God's mercy 
coming back for the sins of man. Ah ! Heaven 
changes to melody the sharpest voice of earthly 
creatures. What peal of defiance, shout of passion, 
keen report, or blasting curse, can quite drown, or 
for ever prevent, the gentle pleadings of the divine 
voice ? 

I will not, at present, attempt the description of 
any more of the unnumbered situations of highland 
splendor, which months of constant motion brought 
to view. Some are here purposely omitted, because 
I have occasion to employ them for the illustration 
of other points of discourse. Ah ! far off there, the 
mountains, great, good-humored giants, seem laugh- 
ing at the portraitures I have presumed to give 
in using mountainous words so vainly to present 
mountainous things. Yet, when we think of it, 
why should we expect to be able to bring about 
more than a cold, faint, and very distant acquaintance 






THE MOUNTAINS. 83 



of the mountains with those by whom they were 
never seen ? How reveal nature's so various archi- 
tecture of hills — a dome here, a spire or steeple 
there — to a mere ignorant fancy ? How show the 
Mer de Glace, as it heaves its white and green 
billows between the Montanvert and those stone 
lances which the earth holds in rest, and with which 
she pierces the skies, till, as in her hold they lean a 
little from their sharp elevation, they almost threaten 
to overtop and bear down upon Mont Blanc himself? 
Or how paint the glacier's look, as from the Flegere 
we see it rushing into the vale beneath, like a river 
into a bay, widening at its mouth, groaning with a 
frequent dull sound of its agitated icy waves as they 
descend, not unlike the distant wash and booming of 
the ocean itself? What drawing can we give of the 
centre-piece of all this grandeur, which, as one of 
the poets says, was crowned monarch of the moun- 
tains long ago ? Lo ! there, with his spotless 
covering, which he never takes from his head, he 
stands and defies you, — telling you to carry off his 
likeness if you can in any shape but the airy and 
invisible one of your own memory. Magnificent 
mockery ! Challenge sublime of earth and sky ! 
Like princes round their sovereign, the other hoary 
summits gather, as with silent oaths, to repeat his 
speechless word, and stand by their master. The 
majestic cabinet in eternal session unveil their faces, 
and lift their hoary fronts to those who draw nigh 
their circle. But no Oriental king ever held himself 
in greater seclusion, or ever vouchsafed more dim 



84 THE MOUNTAINS. 

and inadequate notions of his personal glory, than 
do they to those remote from their dwelling. The 
mountains indeed, that they may show their dignity 
and communicate their favors, require to be ap- 
proached with great painstaking and peculiar re- 
spect. 

The difference for the beholder of mountains, 
however, does not arise merely from the difficulty of 
receiving their forms without sight purely into the 
imagination, but also from* the preparation of mind 
occasioned by the traveller's own long and laborious 
search after their grandeur. He pays, in his own ex- 
posure and toil and patience, the price of admission 
to their incomparable theatre. He gains gradually 
the mood to appreciate and enjoy them ; and his mind 
expands to their breadth, and grows up to their ex- 
altation. A man in his easy-chair, reading a book 
or looking at a print, can but partially conceive their 
character. He treads in the edge of their imaginary 
shadow, instead of scaling their real height. Yet is 
it well worth the while to catch even hints and 
reflections of their wondrous substance which God 
made and upreared to be seen and remembered and 
related among men. 

The plains, all save a few barren deserts of sand, 
have yielded to the possession of human art. The 
hills, as in the old Scriptures they are called, are, 
indeed, everlasting. When we have left them, they 
cannot be forgotten or removed from our thought. 
As we still feel in our nerves the motion of the sea 
after we have planted our feet on the firm land, so 



THE MOUNTAINS. 85 

the crests and hollows of the solid globe continue to 
make themselves felt in our mind. Away vastly 
they stretch in their earthy storm, their fixed fluc- 
tuation, their surge of primeval rock into the skies. 
Once seen, ever after remaining a new and glorious 
furniture of the mind, in their immense spread on 
the floor of the world wondrously somehow, with 
no loss of size, transferred to the chambers of the 
imagination, they stand there, a mute, material 
warning against all moral narrowness and bigotry. 
Liberty and law, magnanimity and humility, inflexi- 
ble sincerity and inexhaustible bounty, are their 
lessons. Purity ever descending from the heavens, 
in their flowing robes or frozen garb, is their per- 
petual example and admonition. And he that 
climbeth up their side, resolutely keeping the rough 
and devious yet ascending way, his prospect widen- 
ing with every step as he goes on, till at the natural 
column's head, held up so mightily and so high, he 
trembles as between two worlds, will be reminded 
of his immortality. 

In fine, a frequent thought among the ' splendors 
of mountain scenery was that innate love of 
equality among men which is in the heart of the 
world, as of God. Nature suffers no pride, and 
abolishes all pretension. What pre-eminence, amid 
these glories, can be boasted by my travelling duke ? 
He has nothing to himself but his velvet seat or 
emblazoned carriage. Why envy yonder earl, by 
whose estate I pass ? He cannot see farther into 
this magnificence, or enjoy it more, than you can, 



86 THE MOUNTAINS. 

unless he have a more poetic eye or a devouter 
heart. Verily, in some places of beauty and gran- 
deur, where the conventional distinctions among 
men are most boldly protruded, they are most 
utterly abashed. Nature allows nothing there to be 
prominent, to excite admiration, or to hold the atten- 
tion of an earnest soul, but herself. Her nobilities 
and royal claims will outlast those of all beside, save 
only genius and virtue. 



THE RIVERS. 



Rivers, what means your ceaseless tide ? 
Why do ye hold us to your side ? 
What is the melancholy spell 
Ye take from nature's living well 
To draw us even till we shrink, 
With tread unsure, upon your brink ? 
Ye are ourselves winding along ; 
In cadence swift you sing our song ; 
For so our lives for ever run, — 
No sooner come than they are gone. 



THE RIVERS. 



All literature, nominally sacred or profane, is proof 
that no object in nature so irresistibly suggests moral 
meanings as a stream. He who muses at all, muses 
on the bank of a river. Especially the rivers of the 
Old World, lined as they are with historic associa- 
tions, with the remains of past grandeur, so strangely 
mocked by the enterprise of a new civilization, move 
the traveller to ponder the fate of men and empires. 
Some of the noblest of these rivers sweep through 
such wide circles, have their source in so many 
branches, or their issue in so many mouths, and 
make in their serpentine length so many turns, as 
they wander among mountains and bound kingdoms, 
or cut them in sunder, that one, traversing Europe 
somewhat thoroughly, will, at great distances, come 
upon the brink of the same current, and find himself 
speculating on its political importance, or searching 
into its deeper correspondence with his mind. Cer- 
tainly he must glide on the surface more than the 
straws and the bubbles do, who considers it merely 



90 THE KIVERS. 

in the way of irrigation, — as carrying on, with sky 
and sea, the circuit of the waters, or furnishing a 
link in the commerce of the globe. 

The charm which Goethe and other poets have 
attributed to the sea, or the mermaids in it, to draw 
the gazer into its tide, tugs at the heart-strings still 
more at the borders of the river, which would bear 
us off with itself to a common destiny. So, but that 
reason held me back from the perilous bidding of a 
mysterious instinct, would I fain have plunged into 
the tide of the River Inn, coursing on through its 
magnificent mountain-girdled valley ; or of the Elbe, 
where the hills of Saxony see themselves in its 
liquid glass ; or of the Moldau, as it divides the 
romantic city of Prague, rushing over the dust of 
many that have struggled in its waters, beneath that 
most captivating half-ruin of a temple that crowns 
one of its upland slopes. Bat no one spot exercised 
this spell so strongly as the gorge of the Salza, near 
Golling, among vast mountains, which gather round 
the infant stream to form a tremendous basin, so 
deep that its descent seems to let one into the very 
bowels of the earth. Of all pits, it appears the 
most huge and fearful. As one gazes round from 
the bottom, he seems to be looking at an amphithea- 
tre thai, might have been used by those awful giants, 
who are fabled to have stepped from hill to hill, and 
left the print of their tread or of their sitting upon 
the solid rock. As from a cup, whose edge is a mile 
high, runs out the Salza ; but, in the course of ages, 
it has so worn away at the foundations of its bed, 



THE RIVERS. 91 

that huge precipices and whole hills, covered with 
earth and trees, have fallen sheer down to form dizzy- 
bridges above its channel, and swell the hollow mur- 
mur of its flow. Near by is a ledgy pass, which a 
few Tyrolese made good against the hosts of their 
French and Bavarian foes, and which has had its 
repeated wetting of blood in the conflicts for free- 
dom. The whole space is like the inverted, airy 
shape of a mountain, or the mould in which a 
mountain might be run ; and, from its singularity, it 
leaves an impression on the mind beyond that of the 
cloud-capped summits themselves. 

But the rivers, which were our most frequent 
companions, and for which we came to feel, at last, 
the sort of affection one has for fellow-travellers, 
were the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Danube. The 
Rhine and Rhone, diverging widely in their course, 
till the former empties into the North Sea, and the 
latter into the Mediterranean, though so estranged in 
their careers and the ends of their existence, are 
almost playmates among the Swiss heights in their 
childhood. From a cavern of ice, more than a mile 
above the level of the sea, at the foot of a vast 
glacier, issues the Rhone, that is to fall into mild 
midland waters ; and a few miles eastward springs out 
one of the branches of the Rhine ; while the Mounts 
Furca and St. Gothard seem to gaze grimly at each 
other, as they stand guard respectively over their 
children's cradles. Perhaps the most interesting 
part of the Rhone is its connection with the Lake of 
Geneva, and the most famous single locality upon 



92 THE RIVERS. 

the Rhine the Falls of SchafFhausen, where, includ- 
ing the rapids, the river descends a hundred feet. 
Looking from the side of the river, farthest from 
the principal fall, one who has seen Niagara, or even 
Montmorency, will be disappointed at the spectacle. 
A near approach, however, to the cataract, in the 
very act of its boiling plunge, will not fail to thrill 
the frame of body and soul with that peculiar mix- 
ture of amazement and delight so welcome to the 
lovers of strong sensations. 

As the course of the Rhine will furnish me else- 
where with an illustration of a particular topic, I 
shall only add here, in the way of continuous de- 
scription, an account of a less frequent experience 
of American travellers ; namely, a voyage up the 
Danube. Up, I say ; for, at Vienna, we were already 
near enough to the seat of war without going farther 
down ; and, besides, the glorious scenery of the 
stream was above. The Rhine and the Danube 
have sometimes been regarded as rivals in beauty or 
grandeur, each with its own friends who prefer it to 
the other. Having, under favorable circumstances, 
formed intimate acquaintance with both, I am con- 
strained to yield the palm of glory to the Danube. 
The romance of the robber-castles — those fossil 
remains of human life, more significant than any 
which the geologist digs from under ground — gives 
its strange attraction equally to either. In richness 
of cultivation, and the multitude of fine harmonies 
or contrasts of art with nature, the Rhine is certainly 
superior ; but, in the impressiveness of its tide, and 



THE RIVERS. 93 

the sublimity of its shores, the tributary of the 
Black Sea no less certainly transcends its German 
brother. Would I could convey a just idea of our 
ascent and descent of that portion of the Danube 
which lies between Passau and Linz ! Let the reader 
conceive the diverse charms of still mountains and 
flowing waters combined in one picture. The hills, 
indeed, at some former epoch, seem to have met to- 
gether and disputed the passage. But the river they 
would repel found means to overcome their opposi- 
tion and force its way. Yet there they continue to 
stand, at once witnesses of their own stout resistance 
and monuments of its complete victory. Indeed, as 
a general thing, the fluid parts of nature seem to 
have a strength and permanency beyond the solid. 
Earth and granite do not endure and hold their 
own like water. Hill-tops and rocky ramparts and 
ancient forests waste away ; but the neighboring 
stream remains the same, witness and agent of the 
destruction of what looked so much more formidable 
than itself. There is a power in motion beyond any 
mere dead weight ; a fact suggesting the query, 
whether it is not equally true of human nature, that 
its flowing elements, its sentiments and affections, 
are more enduring than all the fixtures of its opi- 
nions and dogmatic creeds. 

I must not, however, for such similitudes of spe- 
culation, neglect the actual features of the Danube's 
glorious tide. Within a space of a few miles, the 
river seeks every quarter of the horizon, boxing, 
as mariners say, the compass, and making a very 



94 THE 11IVERS. 

jagged sort of polygon, or series of bending lines, to 
get along. There is a peculiar charm in thus going 
between the lofty summits ; not by laboring on, — 
as on your journey you may recently have been 
doing, — with weary foot, over every steep and flinty 
obstruction which shoots from the ground or has 
rolled from the heights ; but advancing by a motion 
of your vessel, smooth as any pleasant dream. 
Curve after curve, the point of view is shifted, new 
elevations come, with sudden astonishment, into 
sight, as the river, like a guide through its own 
magnificence, indicates each minute afresh the direc- 
tion to take ; till, as the bow of the boat pushes 
unsteadily to and fro, you know not which to ad- 
mire most, — the devious track, or the marvellous 
arrangement by which nature has contrived to keep 
up her enchantment and your excitement so long. 
I remember no other instance where the attention 
was so firmly held, the interest of the mind so per- 
petually stung with ever-recurring wonders, while 
we thus won reach after reach of the mighty cur- 
rent, like a troop gaining parallel after parallel of 
a fortified place. Rapid and whirlpool, which we 
had left behind, were forgotten, as we pierced farther 
into this amazing defile at once of land and water. 
And as, on returning, our steamer shot with more than 
double velocity, like an arrow, between these bold 
headlands, that intruded their beauty and terror so 
near, we could scarce believe, when waked from our 
r every by the landing at Linz, that we had reached 
our destination, and that, in or out of dreamland, 



THE RIVERS. 95 

what we saw was not some other town. Many hard 
and grand mountain-passes did we go through on 
our journey : this was a river-pass of easy access 
and luxurious sublimity. The stream, like some 
brave conqueror, had fought its way through the 
most formidable opposition, so that the weakest 
thing might quietly follow after. Thus, after fierce 
and long struggles of war, come the hush, the 
smoothness, the calm progress of peace. Those 
that were adversaries even gently visit, ennoble, 
and enrich each other, as the mountains and the 
tide, once at strife, now give and take richness in 
fine courtesy of lofty exchange, and are mutually 
glorified. 

I must now be pardoned, if the rivers, all together, 
with that strange influence already referred to, and 
which, at the very thought of them, I always feel, 
bear me off from these particular sketches into 
some wider meditations. The children, immediate 
descendants of the mountains, — they are intimately 
connected with the whole frame and motion of the 
material world. Nature wears them as her silver 
girdles, — bands that reach to the sea and the sun. 
"With the eternal deep for their beginning and end, 
light and heat for messengers, employing the winds 
for carriers, clouds for mediators, and having their pa- 
rentage in the hills, — whose own distinct attraction, 
separate from the general gravitation of the earth, 
gathers the mists into their almost perpetual embrace, 
— the rivers are the vital fluid of the earth, and 
their channels the arteries of its essential circulations. 



96 THE RIVERS. 

But, to the thoughtful and imaginative eye, the ma- 
terial importance of the river is swallowed up in its 
moral significance. Let the reader bear with some 
sober sentences with which I try to trace it, and dis- 
close the river in the bed of its deepest idea. Our 
human life has been compared to a dream, a tale, a 
vapor, a shadow, a flower, but to nothing so truly as 
to a river. So we instinctively rank as the greatest 
and truly most important river on the globe, not 
that which bears on its bosom the greatest ships, or 
waters the widest territory, or is lined with the most 
delicious scenery, but that which is laden with the 
richest freight of instruction to human beings. The 
Jordan is a little stream, physically hardly fit to be 
one of the tributary rills of the Amazon. But 
which of the two streams has done most for the wel- 
fare of mankind? Which, for present thought and 
future association, could be best spared from human 
memory and the face of the earth ? Whose judg- 
ment on such a question would be most valuable, — 
that of geographers, politicians, and financiers ; or of 
poets, mystics, and believing souls ? Such queries 
may, at least, justify this turn of my theme, to de- 
tect a resemblance for human life. 

As the scale of rivers on the globe marks them of 
different length and depth and breadth, so vary, 
indeed, in magnitude and importance, the diverse 
careers of men ; but they all rise from the smallest 
beginnings, and they all end in the ocean of eternity. 
In many an eddy the tide seems to hesitate, and 
even turn back, or, in quiet nooks, to rest embayed, 



THE RIVERS. 97 

undisturbed, and still, as if it were to be here for 
ever ; but tide and eddy and peaceful-looking surface 
together are floating on without delay, to empty into 
the everlasting sea. So, with all our thoughts and 
reflections, and tranquil satisfactions, and backward- 
looking memories, we glide to the eternal doom. 
By house and city and field and hill and castle-wall, 
rush the Rhine and Elbe and Danube. So the 
onward course of our existence leaves behind scene 
after scene, interest after interest, of our advancing 
career, — childhood with its sports, youth with its 
opportunities, manhood with its struggles for gain 
and success, — till it plunges, lost in the gulf that 
whelms all, and we are seen and heard here no 
more. 

But on the brink of the watery stream our reflec- 
tion is, that it matters not how long or short the 
river of our particular life ; whether, like many a 
rill, it reaches quickly, with the brief term of in- 
fancy, the mighty flood ; or whether, like some 
Missouri or Amazon, that cuts the breadth of the 
earth, it has the most enduring worldly date ; but 
that the great question is of the purity or pollution 
of the stream. In such a position we must feel, too, 
that, if it be polluted, it is because it has become so ; 
that, when it sprang fresh from the fountain of being, 
it was pure. The river may become stained and 
filthy in its course ; but it was transparent and clear 
in its commencement. Ten thousand springs have 
I seen ; but never one that was not pellucid and 
bright where it burst from its creative bed. Ten 

9 






98 THE RIVERS. 

thousand glittering falls of water, silver threads, 
and gushing torrents, over the mountain precipices, 
have I beheld ; but none that did not seem to be 
God's own holy water, with which he sprinkles 
the habitation of his children. So, musing beside 
the streams, we feel that never, from its mysterious 
depths, did the life of the soul begin in the babe, 
save with unspotted innocency ; and never did it run 
and leap with the first childish gayety and affection, 
but in uncorrupted candor and perfect beauty. In a 
world of evil, and of depraving influence, grant us 
alike this consolation and rebuke. Once the rain 
from heaven, and the driven snow, which on the far 
sunlit tops sink and melt to supply yonder springs, 
were not more unblemished than our instincts and 
faculties instilled from the spirit of their Author. 

Truly, the beauty of the world is the river which 
is like its fountain in all its way. What matchless 
splendor and unmixed delight from the translucent 
brooks that keep themselves clean throughout their 
channels ! Who has not fondly surveyed them 
glancing downwards from their upland homes, tak- 
ing no shadow from shapes of ill into their bosoms, 
sometimes in rivers broad and deep, maintaining their 
immaculateness, and bearing the business and plea- 
sure and travel of the world on their fair, unspotted 
breasts ? But, alas ! how often is it otherwise ! 
Verily, our soul is like water ; nothing more pure, 
nothing more corruptible. The river cannot choose 
its own course. It is a mechanical instrument, sub- 
missive to the laws of matter and the necessities of 






THE RIVERS. 99 

its use. In its corruption it has no reproach ; in its 
crystal floor, no particle of excellence, no praise, no 
moral quality. Sometimes it would seem, that, in 
our own separate path, we might move securely, 
nor ever be unclean, — our imagination, untouched 
with low desires, like the shining mirror of the wave 
that is ruffled by no storm, and turbid with no speck 
of dust. But some bad companionship is admitted 
to dash this clearness, and spoil this reflection of a 
heavenly hope. So not seldom is it with the river- 
stream. The Rhone, flowing from the beautiful 
Lake of Geneva, for awhile maintains the glory and 
the pride of its stainless waters, with their slightly 
bluish tinge finely throwing back the enchanting 
colors of the sky. But at length the furious and 
muddy torrent of the Arve breaks in upon it at one 
side. Long the Rhone, as if it had a feeling like a 
live and spiritual creature, resists the intruder, and 
refuses to mix with it ; and the line of separation 
between the foul and limpid water is for a consider- 
able distance preceptibly marked. But the Arve 
finally prevails ; and the Rhone, its integrity once 
lost, does not regain its purity till it reaches and is 
swallowed up in the foaming, everlasting sea. 

The right or the wrong is the great thing in hu- 
man life. It is not, however, the whole of our 
existence. Life has its happiness, or its misery too, 
intimately, indeed, connected with, yet not always 
completely dependent on, our own behavior. And, 
with some, the trials and hinderances they have 
encountered draw the principal trait in the general 



100 THE RIVERS. 

picture, and weigh so heavily on their minds as to 
make themselves almost question the goodness of 
God. But these trials and hinderances are needful 
to form our character. This, too, is another thought 
suggested by the pilgrim's position, which he would 
have his imaginative reader take with him on the 
brink of the stream. For how is it with the river ? 
It does not have a perfectly smooth time. As a little 
infant-fountain, it makes its way through obstacles to 
the light of day ; and no sooner does it flow over 
at the surface of the ground, than it meets with inter- 
ruptions still, — a stone here in its path, an unevenness 
there, tossing it rudely and awkwardly, as it cannot 
help itself, from side to side. But, so thrown about, 
what follows but that it is obliged to make progress 
and dig its own channel, — when otherwise, having 
no opposition, it would have spread with easy sloth 
into a shallow pool, from which it must have been 
evaporated and lost, and not been a river at all ? It 
turns its obstacles into its banks ; it hollows out of 
its hinderances its deep bed ; it fashions from every 
thing, that confronts and pushes it back, its own 
greatness and dignity as a stream, till you see it 
rolling like Niagara between mighty opposing 
precipices of stone, that once joined together to 
block and dispute the passage, but were driven to 
be the very glory of that which they strove to repulse. 
In the Alpine gorges I have seen a little rivulet, 
whose unwearied perseverance has cut hundreds of 
feet down through the solid rock to finish the cleft, 
marking the landscape for a hundred miles, by which 



THE RIVERS. 101 

the everlasting hills, with their bald heads gazing at 
each other, were parted to let the traveller through. 
So, verily, the only way for the life of a moral crea- 
ture is to dig its own channel. 

But it was not meant that the river of life, even 
when, after whatever struggles and accomplishments, 
it has won its deep and regular channel, should flow 
on with endless peace in this world. It were as 
foolish to expect it as to look for a river on the 
globe that should run without a break or ripple on 
its surface, or any issue of its body into the deep. 
What blessed motion in the river of life, as it flows 
in our affections of family and kindred! I have 
witnessed that perhaps most charming of all spec- 
tacles of human felicity, where, with the meeting 
courses of manly and womanly love, was formed 
the tide of domestic union and concord; and, like 
some pageant of pictured glory, I have witnessed 
the vanishing of that spectacle away. In the sanc- 
tuary, with the confirming words of religion, I have 
fixed that seal which ranks as a privilege among 
many mournful duties. From two connected hearts, 
the harmonious currents of mutual gladness min- 
gling ran. The great congregation sympathetic 
waited by, as on the brink of some beautiful stream, 
at whose imagery they were gazing entranced. Go 
forth, wedded pair, with the benediction through your 
career ! and forth, like the stream, they go. Un- 
resting time rolls on, till, for the funeral rites, we are 
called to the very spot, in the temple, at the altar, 
where last we stood for the marriage-festival. There 



10£ THE RIVERS. 

is the congregation as before ; there are the ordi- 
nances of the same religion, the prayers of the same 
faith ; but where the bride appeared, her coffin ! 
The fresh circular wreath of flowers lying there 
upon the coffindid, — has it fallen from her head ? 
Ah ! as they fade on the coffin, so withers under- 
neath, into dust and ashes, the fairer flower of humani- 
ty. The tide of domestic comfort and joy, where that 
fairer flower grew and blossomed into its best fra- 
grance and beauty, — like rivers you may have seen, 
lost in the sands of the desert, — has disappeared, 
sunk out of sight. But thanks for the word of 
revelation, that it shall rise and burst forth again in 
a grander channel ! Thanks, beloved disciple of 
Jesus, for the language with which thou wast in- 
spired to tell of what, with uplifted vision, thou 
sawest in heaven, — even " a pure river of water 
of life " ! 

I make no apology for the moral strain into 
which, by the streams, I am borne. The thoughts 
and associations irresistibly awakened by the rivers, 
are part of the rivers themselves, and no more out 
of place, in the description of them, than is an ac- 
count of the color of their water, of the growths 
reflected in their bosom, or the depth and length of 
their stream. The rivers are but passages, indeed, 
in that great volume of nature, which we are in this 
age just learning, with more than a merely intellec- 
tual glance, — even with a spiritual eye, — to peruse, 
and which is unfolding upon its pages many a truth 
that it requires no man's peculiarly professional 



THE RIVERS. 108 

instinct to recognize. It is a reading age ; we search 
for truth in books ; but do we not overlook many 
lessons which we might better learn from natural 
objects ? "What reading, verily, there is in other 
volumes, and from other types, than those of the 
press ! The man of science runs his sections labo- 
riously down to cut the strata of the earth, that 
he may arrange their hidden order in representative 
colors for the information of our eye. Is there 
not something, flowing full in sight over all these 
strata, which, though in appearance superficial, 
is as deep in meaning as the rocky basis, or the 
fiery core of the globe ? Bear into our hearts, 
ye rivers, all the messages with which your Maker 
put you in trust ; make our thoughts, in clearness 
and onward motion, like your grand unceasing tide ; 
for, verily, as I looked upon you, leaping from your 
lofty sources, I derived the best image, that all 
nature can suggest, of a truly great soul's purpose 
and motion ; simple and direct, but sublime, both in 
the origin and end, — even as your tide goes forth, 
with unambitious plainness, in the light of day, but 
goes from the mountains to the sea. The heavenly 
beginning, alike for life and the river, insures the 
final rest, the eternal peace. 



THE LAKES. 



Shining deep among the hills, — 
Winds its breath, its food the rills ; 
Sinking for its obscure birth 
Into springs of nether earth, 
While its basin's rocky rim 
Towers till the sight grows dim ; 
Rivalling the upper sky 
With its sevenfold purity ; 
Mocking every pitchy cloud, 
As it takes its deathly shroud ; 
Mirror of each shape and shade, — 
Sullen soon where peace just played ; 
Image of angelic soul, — 
Evil prophet's wrathful scroll ; 
Winning now our happy stay, 
Warning with the storm's array" ; 
Acting still the moody part, 
Throwing back the observer's heart ; 
Cunning lake, in holy wiles, 
Plays with truth, to good beguiles. 



THE LAKES. 



In those happy spots of nature where land and 
water, above and below, combine their charms, it is 
hard to tell whether the stony upland "height, or 
the liquid deep beneath, most lures the sight. I 
believe it was Goethe who first said that lakes are 
the eyes of the landscape ; and, if there be reason 
for such a figure, it is not strange such features in 
the countenance of the world should fix our regard. 
Certainly they add to that countenance the same 
sort of brightness and animation which the organs 
of vision give to the human face ; and as our glance, 
perusing the living traits of a man, is never satisfied 
till it reaches his eye, so on the earth we seek after 
water, and are not quite content till our attention, 
long vagrant, rests in peace upon it. But I cannot 
help claiming a yet deeper significance for the lake, 
and regarding it as an image of that human heart, 
of which the human eye is but the expression and 
avenue. Certainly I do not mean to push such a 
comparison into any elaborateness, or to shape it in 



108 THE LAKES. 

any theory ; but as an exhibitor is careful to let in 
the light in the best direction from above upon his 
picture, so I may suggest a general principle to add 
interest to my little portrait-gallery, or to explain 
any interest it may attract. 

The race of travellers seems to have agreed upon 
Switzerland as the chosen spot, beyond all others, 
most delightful to a visitor, — "the summer-house" 
of the world. Without questioning that Switzerland 
has charms, in their kind unrivalled, if not peculiar 
to itself, one may well deny that it is, in all respects, 
superior, and be disposed to affirm, in some particu- 
lars, the exceeding beauty of the more remote and 
less frequently explored country of the Tyrol. One, 
who has even partially examined the striking points 
in both regions, may seriously doubt which, on the 
whole, whether for pleasure or instruction, he would 
prefer. The mountains of Switzerland, considered 
alone, would carry off the palm. The sublime 
Alps, in general, lower their crests and narrow their 
shoulders as they slope off north-east and south-east 
from Piedmont and Savoy, through the Austrian 
dominions ; though ever and anon they rise again, 
so abruptly that it seems as if they would fain atone 
for their somewhat lesser altitude by their more 
direct ascent into the heavens. Such a dome as that 
of the Rhsetian giant, called the Ortler Spitze, with 
the everlasting hoar frosting its brow, almost chal- 
lenges supremacy ; but the surveyor's glass and 
measure must put him down by a whole head lower 
than those material Anaks that peer over against him 



THE LAKES. 109 

from the western quarter of the horizon. But what 
the mountains thus lose, the lakes gain. It is impos- 
sible to unite all advantages of scenery in one single 
place ; and the principle of compensation, that runs 
through human life, extends its fatal line through 
nature also. There are no mountains in the Tyrol to 
equal Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, or the Jungfrau ; 
but there are no lakes in Switzerland, Piedmont, or 
Savoy, to equal Konigsee, Traunsee, and Achensee, 
either in the exquisite grace of all these, or in the 
hilly grandeur which the first of them has gathered 
about its borders. Nay, even in England and Scot- 
land — where the lakes and hills alike are compara- 
tively on a scale so reduced, and seem to assume 
an air of respectability and moderation, as though 
aware of the cultivation around them, and desirous 
to be in harmony with lawful customs and a civi- 
lized life — I caught special effects, which there is 
nothing precisely to match in the Lake of Geneva, or 
at the foot of Rigi. So is beauty, like the sundered 
body of Osiris in the fable, scattered all through the 
creation. 

One of the most peculiar effects of lake-scenery 
we experienced in England. Passing by Rydal 
Water, a little sheet near the house of the poet 
"Wordsworth, we were indeed thrown into a sort of 
trance by a sight which we knew not whether to re- 
gard as an outward reality, or a sudden revealing of 
the splendid imagination and the glorious spiritual 
calm of the translated bard himself. Softly-swelling 
hills crowned the farther border of the lake, which 

10 



110 THE LAKES. 

strangely and inexplicably, at their base, appeared to 
meet other corresponding hills, to the eye just as 
solid and distinct, and so closely joined to the former 
ones as to make a single mass, lifting one head into 
the sky above, dropping another into the sky below, 
till the earth-surrounding heaven seemed for once to 
be revealed in full circle, spite of the solid platform 
of the ground. For a considerable time, actually 
bewildered, I strove to comprehend the meaning of 
the spectacle, knowing well it must be some magni- 
ficent illusion, — one of those innocent tricks of light 
and shade of which nature plays so many; but in 
vain. It could not be told what was substance, and 
what was reflection. With the keenest look, none 
could see the line at which the water met the land. 
So smooth was the surface, so absolutely unruffled 
lay the mirror under that mild air, in that soft after- 
noon light, so green and blossoming was that beauti- 
ful under as well as upper world, that the real objects 
and their shadows could not be viewed apart, or in 
any way distinguished into truth on the one side, 
or deception on the other. Was the unsubstantial 
thing I saw below, delusion? Ah! was not the 
thing I saw above, so firm in its earthy shape and 
granite bulk, a delusion, too, compared with the 
eternal reality of those yet higher, spiritual objects 
of the other world, revealed to our love and faith ? 
When we dream, our dream is as real to us as our 
life is when we are awake. The mountain shall 
stand for the consciousness of broad day, and the 
reflection for the dream of the night. Both are 



THE LAKES. Ill 

dreams here below, in that they will soon be over. 
But, I must say, this new realizing of the story of 
Narcissus seeing himself in the fountain, struck me 
as peculiarly appropriate to the place where one's 
mind is full of the great poet passed away, whose 
soul was just such a mirror as his favorite mere, 
who lived a life of symbol and fancy, who showed 
all things in the magic glass of spiritual discernment, 
to whom nothing was only what it seemed, but who 
has gone to experience the unseen reality he wor- 
shipped, and, through so many hiding-places and 
with such faculty of keen apprehension, sought to 
find. I shall carry in mind the spot of his residence 
as the emblem of his spirit, lover as he was of na- 
ture, that so gratefully enshrines him, but more ear- 
nest lover and servant of God. The peace he saw so 
clear on earth, he sees fairer and deeper in heaven. 

Earlier in time, though farther from home, it was 
our privilege to behold those wonders of Tyrolese 
lake-scenery, to which the finest Cumberland lakes, 
Windermere or Derwentwater, or the Scottish lochs, 
Lomond and Katrine, are, in themselves considered, 
insignificant. Never can I forget the way from Linz 
to Ischl over the Traunsee. A ride upon a tram- 
road, a kind of horse-railway, brought us, through 
the mist and rain of a gloomy morning, to the brink 
of this exquisite basin, this felicity of Nature, in 
which she seems at once to enjoy herself, and to be 
bent on making her children happy. That for us, 
too, her purpose might not fail, the clouds broke 
away ; the shower ceased. It had only come to 



11£ THE LAKES. 

cleanse the earth and air, and make all around more 
fair and lovely than even by light alone it can be 
made. Into the pellucid water glides our little boat. 
As I gazed, I felt almost unsafe, suspended at some 
dizzy height ; for it was as if only the thinnest, 
finest layer of gossamer fabric were stretched there 
for a horizontal veil or floor, and on both sides the 
unfathomable abyss. On smoothly darts our secure 
vessel. I look over her side into the infinite chasm. 
"What keeps her from falling down ? On what mys- 
terious support does she ride between these rival 
skies ? How, through this hollow sphere, holds she 
her level way ? Is she a fairy bark ? and are we 
spirits transported now towards some sphere of the 
blessed ? From this mood I was diverted a little, 
and my mind saved from losing itself in pure ecstasy, 
by observing the huge forms of the inverted hills, 
running downward as far as upward, in their erect- 
ness, they climbed. What refinement of pleasure 
was there in remarking the minuteness, as well as 
vajstness, of the copy ! Ah ! no copyist of the old 
masters can render his original upon the canvas as 
faithfully in every line and hue, or with expression 
so perfect and speaking, as it pleases God here to 
translate his own works in the engravings of this 
marvellous page. He, too, writes his name in water ; 
and, if it fades with the ruffling wind, it fades but 
to return again with spell more sweetly binding than 
if it had not vanished at all. How we admired the 
submarine curving lines, the diverse shades, — each 
angle flashing back the light, each vapor-shrouded 



THE LAKES. 113 

point jutting from the mighty mass, — the shreds 
of woolly cloud floating underneath, and the winds 
blowing gently round the spectral mountain's brow 
as truly as about the other mountain on high ! How 
the double glory divided our regard, till we drew 
towards the shore from which we were to roll in 
wheels again by a road hedged in on one side by 
verdant woods, and on the other by amber streams, 
that, with their clear, delicious color, told us whence 
the lake derived its crystal character to make it like 
" one entire and perfect chrysolite " ! 

Of the town of Ischl, elsewhere referred to, which 
nestles in a circle of mountains, brooding shaggy 
around it, like lions about their young, it would be 
a digression here to speak. In the light of thought, 
lake joins with lake, however sundered by wide 
spaces on the globe, till the beautiful sheets of 
water become all one chain, throughout whose ex- 
tent a twofold meaning ever suggests and repeats 
itself. With the sheet of glassy water, we become 
reflective. The look with which we pierce its un- 
fathomed calm seems directed into our own soul. 
Truth lies in a well, saith the proverb. If the 
proverb arose from the dusky but vivid glimmer 
which the surface of a deep well sends back to the 
beholder leaning over its curbstone, those profounder 
chasms, seas or tarns, filled by rains and streams, 
which, among very lofty hills, seem like huge wells 
dug by the hand of nature, may be regarded as 
more striking images and monitions of spiritual 
reality. Their mighty enclosures of highland hide 

10* 



114 THE LAKES. 

them away, as the heart is hidden from sight of all 
but those who closely approach it ; while from the 
lake, too, as from the heart of nature, proceed those 
circulating streams of refreshment and growth, by 
which the solid body of the earth is renewed in 
strength, and clothed with beauty. 

But, following no farther the line of analogies, 
leaving my readers to suggest to themselves those 
correspondences which we perhaps always consider 
more or less fanciful when they are offered from 
another mind, I should count it disloyalty, flagrant 
ingratitude for my own enjoyment, if 1 did not 
attempt at least to describe some of my direct im- 
pressions, especially of Konigsee or the King's Lake. 
King indeed it shows itself among all the inland 
bodies of water which it has been my fortune to 
survey. The best approach to it is from Salzburg, 
which, with its commanding situation, its towering 
walls, the crown of its enormous castle, its rich 
cultivation, and the magnificent prospects from its 
neighboring heights of glorious far-off mountains, 
has secured to itself an almost unanimous suffrage 
as the most beautiful town in Germany. My pre- 
sent concern, however, is with its splendid neighbor, 
lying close under the little village of Berchtesgaden, 
but stretching and winding lustrous many miles 
away in the vast cleft which the Creator, loving 
beauty, has made as a vessel to hold it. 

To convey a just image of the lake itself, I shall 
be obliged to give also such poor word-drawing as 
I can of its immense mountain-frame, which shoots 



THE LAKES. 115 

tip point after point, with the graceful curving of 
its sublime architecture, to altitudes of from one to 
nearly two miles above the level of the sea. A 
little bark, quietly rowed by men and maidens, 
takes you, reach after reach, along the branches and 
liquid limbs which this sovereign in his kind 
stretches out into every angle and cove. The grand 
hills, one after another, salute you as you pass by ; 
but they seem only subsidiary to, and in fact part 
of, the lake of which they are the setting, as a circle 
of gold or a rim of garnets with the diamond of 
the first water within. The huge proportions of the 
solid peaks, which are repeated beneath, — the ele- 
vation amazing you, and the depression still more, — 
in their reversal look as if they had been dropped, 
nature's own lines, to gauge the watery depth. 
But they seem to drop into measureless space, by 
their vain length suggesting, not equality, but con- 
trast, with the infinity they poorly mock ; just as 
large extents of time are, in our conception, added 
together to hint the eternity they can never reach. 
The more of the finite we put together, the farther 
ofF we are from the infinite we would approach, of 
which yet, in this very offset, we find some such 
dream as alone we are capable of; and so these 
material visions passed imperceptibly over into vi- 
sions of the soul. I was truly in a great closet of 
prayer, so retired and still was the shadowy space 
within those tremendous walls. But a shout or 
pistol-shot from our helmsman very practically 
breaks up the soft, ecstatic revery ; as the little 



116 THE LAKES. 

noise that would be momentarily dispersed in the 
air above an open plain, rolls swelling through 
the hollows of the unmeasured amphitheatre, and 
returns as from the cloud comes ominous thunder. 

On we glide, mile after mile, to the very extre- 
mity of this enchantment, to land on the farther 
border, and walk till we come to the Obersee, or 
Oversea, a smaller sheet, lying there all alone, like 
a child separated from its parent. This most tender 
and exquisite thing, bright and graceful as a silver 
dish carved by the artist's cunning for a prince's 
table, is placed amid wild and savage scenery. The 
clear gentleness and the rocky rudeness mutually 
heighten and set forth each other. Never before 
had I seen an image so fine of a noble heart calm 
and unmoved amid all the terrors and threats and 
confusions of the world. It was a place fit for a 
hero's rest, a believer's contemplation, or a martyr's 
solace. 

But, throughout the marvellous space that belongs 
to Konigsee, it seems to be the settled purpose of 
nature to set traits soft and lovely over against 
the stern and awful, as they are set in the alternate 
agitations and composures of the human breast. 
Returning by a different line across the principal 
lake, we disembark at a spot where the mountains, 
as by common consent withdrawing on either side, 
leave the richest of green and grassy meadows 
gradually sloping to the water's edge. As the soft 
verdure closes round our feet, we lift our eyes, and 
see the chamois, like dark specks mixed confusedly 



THE LAKES. 117 

in sunlight, scattered in the patches of snow that 
whiten the sides of the. distant mountains ; those 
actually in the snow, of course, being alone visible 
so far to the eye. 

From this verdure an hour's walk carries us to 
the Chapelle de Glace, or Ice Chapel ; not a building 
of human hands, such as the Russian empress reared 
out of frozen blocks from the Neva, but a spotless 
architecture of nature's own contriving. It is simply 
a mass of ice and snow at the foot of a mountain, 
as it were a cold challenge thrown from it to the 
ground, and never, in the hottest sun of August, 
melting away, or, if it dissolves beneath into the 
running stream, ever, as a glacier, supplied anew 
from above, and, like a steady, though ever- shifting, 
column of smoke from a chimney, not changing its 
own apparent shape and look. But whence sup- 
plied ? The terrific peak that runs directly over it, 
like a splinter of the globe, sharp into the sky, is 
not clad in snow. Scarce a grain, it would seem, 
could stay upon its keen edges without being blown 
off, and lost in the winds. There it stands, as the 
earth's own spire, actually piercing the heavens, 
leaving behind all towers of man's construction as 
at its very base, and suffering no touch of any hand, 
or accretion of foreign substance, to mar or alter at 
all its hues or proportions. Strange spectacle it was 
to see the bare summit, brown as it would have 
been in the tropics, in the temperature of its so 
greatly aggravated cold, refusing the snowdrift, and 
casting it down into such humility at its base, where 



118 THE LAKES. 

it lay quiet from an origin wholly mysterious and 
unknown. Quaintly that snowdrift reminded one of 
the ancient widow's cruse of oil, subject to ceaseless 
draughts, but never failing. 

The Ice Chapel has an atmosphere of its own ; so 
that, as we drew near it, the guide gave a signal to 
put on additional garments, for protection against 
sudden chills. The entire scene, while we stood on 
the chapel-floor, made on the mind one of those 
indelible stamps which single themselves out into 
prominence from the multitude of one's impressions, 
and are preserved for ever. Far below ran the rivu- 
lets into the majestic lake upon which we had sailed. 
Right above, the mountain pierced the sky. It was 
the first we had closely seen which aspired to belong 
to the highest class of mountains ; and, by its pecu- 
liarity, it left an impression, which no image that 
came after, even from the Silver Horn or the Jung- 
frau, Monte Rosa, or Mont Blanc itself, could efface, 
or much exceed. No : the solemn domes of the sub- 
limest Alps shall not obscure from the sight, or wipe 
from the recollection, that steeple of stone, nearly 
two miles high, on whose marble-like pediment we 
stood and wondered so long. To a contemplative 
eye, the massive and broad-based mountain, which 
seems to have been heaved up, in one of its swells 
after another, by successive throes of the central 
power, is grander than any of the Aiguille Mountains, 
so called from the needle-like sharpness of their ta- 
pering points, — as a man with balanced powers 
excels one with a single prominent faculty. But, 



THE LAKES. 119 

when the Aiguille pierces the sky, and you can draw 
so near to run your eye up its mighty length, there 
is a sudden thrill of astonishing delight, which can 
from no other object in nature be received. But 
neither the marvel nor the genial instruction of the 
spot was yet over. Scarcely more than a minute's 
walk from the Ice Chapel brought us to a bed of 
wild-flowers, the most delicate, profuse, and various 
we had anywhere in the world seen assembled to- 
gether. We were quite unable to number their mani- 
fold kinds, or enough admire their slender beauty, or 
come to an end of our delight in their sensitive life, 
so vigorous and sweet to every sense while they 
hung upon the stalk ; so wan, wilted, scentless, and 
dimmed in their colors, when they were plucked 
away. They were the graces of the terrible moun- 
tain ; they were the ornaments of everlasting frost. 
So out of the religious heart bloom the finest graces 
of meekness, gentleness, kindness, and forgiveness : 
they bloom and flourish on the living stem of Chris- 
tian principle, spite of all, however near, that is cold 
and harsh and forbidding in human life. "With a 
farewell, like the lingering one to a friend, we de- 
scended, till we came to the long, red fringes of 
delicious strawberries lining the path, which had 
lured us up the ascent, and now cheated us out of 
some of our weariness as we went down. The wind 
freshened and the rain began to fall as our clear-eyed 
peasant maidens and simple-minded men rowed us 
back ; the mountains, that still towered overhead, 
no longer returned their gigantic features from be- 



120 THE LAKES. 

low ; and so, in a mist of nature, and with many 
mazy thoughts wandering in our mutual looks, we 
took our leave of Konigsee. 

As an illustration of the purely delicious in water- 
scenery, without the rude or grand, no lake, perhaps, 
stands in such fine contrast with Konigsee as Como. 
The waves of the Alps, running into Italy, and suc- 
cessively lowering their tops, seem to have paused 
around some natural hollow, which they might 
deepen with their sides, and fill from the beakers of 
their white and foaming crests. Nothing could take 
the eye more sweetly than these softly rounded hills, 
finely swelling up, yet not too high to let vegetation 
creep greenly over their tops ; while, with every 
slope into the valleys, or terraced wall upon their 
sides, the growth varies, — the maize and mulberry, 
the vine, olive, and chestnut, in diverse charms, vy- 
ing with each other before the always pleased, but 
never startled, beholder. What is the secret of that 
so strong and continuous spell here fixed upon the 
heart ? Does the spectacle irresistibly suggest a 
thought of that better state, whose hope is hid within 
the breast of man? Is it a type and material pro- 
phecy of that supernaturally predicted heavenly con- 
dition whereinto shall enter nothing that defileth or 
disturbeth? And does the voyager through this 
smooth basin, adorned with fruits and flowers, enjoy 
a foretaste of the blessed rest of the upper heaven 
amid the manifold productions of the tree of life ? 

But such are not the only thoughts suggested by 
lake-scenery. If any one would realize to the full 



THE LAKES. 121 

what opposition can exist between natural objects of 
the same generic order, let him go from Como, across 
the huge Alpine barrier, to Lake Lucerne, perhaps the 
finest in Switzerland, though it cannot reach up to the 
glory of the Tyrolese Konigsee. In the elements, how- 
ever, of a wild and savage interest, it is certainly un- 
surpassed. The jagged character of the land about 
it gives birth to a fury of winds, at the same time 
blowing from opposite quarters out of its different 
indentations, as though the whole neighboring region 
were a manufactory of every description of storm, 
exposing the boatman to peculiar and sudden danger. 
One cannot help feeling that he has seen the proto- 
type or counterpart of this fitful and impetuous 
body of water in some strong and restless nature 
given up to the perpetual control of ever-shifting 
passions. Indeed, a symbolic meaning of this kind 
has attached itself to one feature of the lake, which 
makes such sport of thermometer and barometer, 
and holds itself alone the jealous and fitful measure 
of heat and air in scorn of the inventions of man. 
I refer to a height called Mount Pilate, on which the 
local superstition seems to be concentrated. Accord- 
ing to an ancient tradition, the ruler of Judea, ex- 
iled by the Roman emperor, wandered among the 
mountains, ever pursued by a guilty conscience, till 
he put an end to his intolerable existence by plung- 
ing into a lake on the top of the elevation, ever 
after distinguished by his name. The particulars of 
the legend have passed from mouth to mouth, and 
from book to book. 1 allude to them on account of 

11 



122 THE LAKES. 

an illustration in my own experience of the power 
of such a superstition, once fixed on the mind. Gaz- 
ing, with the story in my memory, was it at all 
fancy, or altogether fact, that presented the mountain 
in the exact shape which a remorseful soul ought to 
assume ? Certainly, in its deep, ragged lines, there 
was a haggard and twisted look, as if something 
had wound or wrenched it out of its regular form. 
It was like a mass of iron, taken red-hot from the 
furnace, and violently wrought till its lines and seams 
are all mixed together. Whatever may be true of 
Pilate, the morally weak, if not guilty, governor, I 
can never cease to carry this, his earthly namesake, 
in my imagination as the natural language of self- 
upbraiding ; even as the golden-plumaged bird that 
lights, while I am writing, in a tree, under whose 
shadow once dwelt a noble man, becomes, by some 
irresistible law of association, the natural language 
of his spirit. 

There could scarcely be a greater contrast between 
different specimens of the same general kind of 
scenery than one feels in attempting to bring to- 
gether in his thoughts Lucerne and Konigsee on the 
one hand, and the trans-Alpine Orta and Maggiore 
on the other. It is the contrast of terror, clad in 
beauty, with loveliness robed in delicacy and grace. 
Mountains are near by on the Italian side ; but they 
are smoothed and tamed by the hand of culture. 
Awful peaks rise in the distance, but only to height- 
en the charms of the romantic seclusion from which 
they are beheld. Upon Lake Maggiore, in the Bor- 



THE LAKES. 123 

romean Islands, a kind of miracle of taste has been 
wrought to arrest the steps of every pilgrim. From 
a soil, itself created and renewed by human labor 
upon the barren rocks, has been made to bloom the 
Flora of the tropics. The orange and citron, the 
sugar-cane and coffee-plant, the myrtle and pome- 
granate, the aloe and cactus and camphor-tree, with 
a multitude of other exotics, welcomed us from the 
snows of the Great St. Bernard, and stood up, fear- 
less, bold, and flourishing, within sight of the per- 
petual ice through which Bonaparte cut a path for 
the descent of his cannon. 

I cannot leave this subject of lakes without vin- 
dicating my claim for them of an intellectual and 
moral interest, by the power of attraction they seem 
always to have had for men of genius. Why re- 
peat, in this connection, what every scholar is 
familiar with, in respect to the Lake of Geneva ? 
Why speak of Rousseau, who has enshrined its 
imagery, so suited to a sentimental idealist, in his 
works ; or of Gibbon, who finished his famous 
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Em- 
pire upon its borders ; or of Byron, whose muse 
gathered her chief inspiration of the nature of a 
tender love from its groves and bays ; or of Voltaire 
and Calvin, — conflicting names indeed, — the first 
of whom declared it to be his own lake, and to have 
precedence of all others ; and the last of whom, 
though he was too suspicious of all earthly fascina- 
tions to let any of its beauty steal into the severity 
of his style, may yet have felt some refreshment 



124 THE LAKES. 

from it fall like dew on his inwardly heated and 
sternly determined soul? He who rolls down the 
long, smooth, zigzag road to Vevay, with Lake 
Leman, as it is otherwise called, shining up to him 
through all the cultured way, and the monarch of 
mountains, whose white cap is sometimes, from a 
distance of sixty miles, reflected in its waters, will 
gain an appetite for feasting on some of the richest 
associations of literary life. 

Moreover, what lover of English poetry needs be 
told of the outward immortality conferred upon 
Cumberland and Westmoreland by the works of 
those who, by way of eminence, are called the lake 
poets ? or what traveller of sensibility but will have 
his pleasure in that exquisite region enhanced by 
recalling the names of Wordsworth and Coleridge 
and Southey ? The very captain of the tiny steamer 
upon Loch Katrine, and the stage-driver from the 
Trosachs, are at once reciters of the verse, and 
orators of the fame, of that wonder of modern let- 
ters, who may well be called Scott, as his genius has 
spread over the whole land that he seems named after, 
as well as born from, and has done not a little to 
make bards of all his countrymen, — a name pre- 
dominating for delight, as does that of Knox for 
duty. 

How many beautiful lakes of our own land only 
wait the consecration of genius to become as famous 
as any in the Old World ! There may be lakes in 
Tyrol and Switzerland, which, in particular respects, 
exceed the charms of any in the western world. 



THE LAKES. 125 

But there are other respects in which nothing can 
exceed what lies close to our own door ; though we 
are so apt, as one said to me, to consider a thing fine 
merely because it is foreign. For example, in that 
wedding of the land with the water, in which one 
is perpetually approaching and retreating from the 
other, and each transforms itself into a thousand 
figures for an endless dance of grace and beauty, till 
a countless multitude of shapes are arranged into 
perfect ease and freedom, of almost musical motion, 
nothing can be beheld to surpass, if to match, our 
"VVinnipiseogee. 

There are many different dialects on the earth ; 
but there is only one language in heaven. Mean- 
time, in the parallels we can trace between such 
features as I have mentioned and the human heart, 
may we not even now escape from our confusion of 
tongues, and Babel shouts of passion, into some an- 
ticipation of that common language ? Is there not 
for us some speech in the lake ? If the river is the 
offspring of the mountain, the lake is the creation of 
visible or subterraneous fountains and streams ; and 
so, if the former symbolizes the vital circulation of 
the human frame, the latter may be a type of the 
human heart. The elements in their general sweep, 
the air and wind and rain, may represent the force of 
circumstances, the influences of society, and public 
opinion ; the liquid reservoirs of nature are a type 
of the secret breast. As the river is the shadow of 
human life, so all the lakes of the globe, — distinct 
accumulations of living water, — sometimes linked 

ll* 



126 THE LAKES. 

together in long, beautiful chains, sometimes separate 
and solitary, furnish the best emblem of the heart of 
man, — the vital centre of the moral world, — now 
lonely, now united in sweetest fellowship with the 
hearts of his kind. 

The calm lake, which has drawn into itself no- 
thing but purity from all the dust and disturbance of 
the world ; which from its limpid wave gives back 
nothing but refreshment to man and beast; which 
reflects the forms of things around and above it with 
unerring truth and beauty, — from the slender twig 
to the huge summits of its mountain-girdled shores 
and the eternal sky, — not one false line or unjust 
proportion in its mirror, more than in the abiding 
realities it portrays ; the lake, whose bosom is as deep 
as its sources in the hills are lofty, and which keeps 
that bosom still unruffled, though mighty rivers issue 
from it through the world : what likeness, in every 
point so perfect, of the holiness and beneficence, the 
truth and equity, the trust in God on high and 
benignant power over the world beneath, of a 
rightly composed and well-regulated heart! Gra- 
cious likeness it is ! Alas ! and can the same heart, 
which is capable of such winning charms and gra- 
cious workings, be so driven and tossed with fierce 
and uncontrollable desires, as to resemble the lake 
only in the madness of its waters, foaming under the 
resistless gale ; no longer imaging any part of 
the sacred vault of heaven at all ; no longer supply- 
ing the needs, or giving furtherance to the creatures, 
of earth, — its own composure lost, and threatening 



THE LAKES. 127 

only peril and ruin to all who tempt its rage ? Cer- 
tainly, upon these marvellous pieces of nature's 
painting he must look with a very superficial eye 
who does not see in them his own moods returned. 
He can have only partially traced their reflections 
who has not followed them back into his own soul. 
He can have from them but a poor and perishable 
satisfaction, to whom they do not read solemn les- 
sons respecting the right internal ordering of his 
desires. He alone is truly blessed, to the agitations 
of whose bosom the Master of human passions, as of 
the stormy waves, has said, " Peace, be still ! " 



THE SEA. 



Beauty, terror of the world; 

Glorious and gloomy thing ; 
Charms and threats together hurled 

In the compass of thy ring : 
Keen exul tings on thy shore 

Answering anguish through thy deeps 
Pleased one listening to thy roar, 

Which another minding weeps : 
Infant's breathing, not so light 

As thy ripple on the sand ; 
Thunders, bearing no such fright 

As the breakers on thy strand : 
Measurer of old earth's time, 

Scorning history's little date; 
Reckoning aeons in thy chime, 

Hint of everlasting state ; 
Robber, spoiling all below, 

Yet who tenfold back dost send ; 
Shall we call thee deadly foe ? 

No, our rough but generous friend ! 



THE SEA. 



The sea is so obvious in its grandeur, that it would 
seem every one's mind might at once take it in, and 
that no description could do more than impoverish 
its own impression. Yet of this sublimest object 
in the terrestrial universe, this greatest indeed of 
material things, with which we are made capable 
of coming into so close contact, — which stirs the 
soul with wonder and terror, or to raptures of joy, 
as nothing else can, — dwellers on the land have 
often inadequate and incorrect ideas. 

One, who has been born and always lived on the 
sea-shore, has, in fact, hardly yet seen the sea ; of 
its simplest attributes he has but a faint idea. Ac- 
curately learning all its mathematical dimensions 
cannot alone enable us to conceive it. The child 
who gazes at an artificial globe, and observes how 
wide is the watery waste compared with the earthy 
continents, may have only a mechanical picture, not 
the reality, in his thought. Figures of hundreds or 
thousands, through the calculating intellect, always 
convey a vague notion, compared with the vivid 



132 THE SEA. 

idea lodged by experience in the imagination. We 
must be upon and cross over the sea, vividly to appre- 
hend its character. Thus only can we feel first its 
extent. When we have watched, day after day and 
night after night, the wake of the swiftest steam- 
ship, and seen the smitten waters boil and phospho- 
resce at being cut so abruptly ; and the week passes 
away while still all around spreads the same fatal 
ring, as though it held you to its own centre, and 
your seeming motion were absolute rest, — you no 
longer wonder at the first navigators for whispering 
with one another in fear whether they should ever 
get over it, and you begin to understand what is 
meant by the broad ocean and the middle deep. 
At last, you perceive that the sea is the great mate- 
rial fact in the world, and the land the exception ; 
with all its continents, only an island in that sur- 
rounding ocean, a little shifting in whose level 
would overwhelm and drown again the whole. 
The dwellers on that island, who fancy their abode 
an endless territory, and imagine that going to sea is 
only a subsidiary circumstance, may, to the sailor 
tossing between the poles, look rather like prisoners 
of hope, tenants at will under the mighty, encroach- 
ing deep. 

Then the landsman has a faint sense of the solitude 
of the sea. He is apt to suppose the sea, on the 
contrary, as a quite sociable place. So many ships, 
entering and clearing every harbor all over the 
world, must make a great community and scene of 
frequent converse upon the rolling billows. For 



THE SEA. 133 

awhile, coming into or going out of the great ports, 
vessels constitute to the imaginative eye a beautiful 
white-winged company ; and those who live at such 
ports, and see them come and go, saluting each other 
on their way, may have fine surmises of their friendly 
intercourse and majestic courtesies throughout their 
whole career. But, farther off upon the great cir- 
cles of the liquid mass, the millions of barks are to 
each other well-nigh lost. Sometimes a ship may be 
spoken ; a letter may pass ; or a crew be saved from 
protracted peril and imminent destruction. Occa- 
sionally the course is shifted, lest one navigator 
should dangerously cross the track of another. But, 
for the most part, vessels are hermits in a desert, as 
separate from each other as anchorites on their pillars 
or in their caves. The gloomy pall, that often hangs 
over the sea, hides them sometimes from each other's 
approach when in immediate vicinity ; and one is 
overridden by another, or, like the ill-fated Arctic, 
stabbed to death beyond all reach of succor. 

Nevertheless, the sea is another name for solitude ; 
and, if you desire to feel alone, go down upon it, 
and from your berth at midnight rise, and pace the 
deck, with no companion, till the wash of the waves 
has sung its monotonous tune into your ear, and the 
universal wilderness above and below has filled your 
eye, and your swaying thought keeps time with the 
rocking together of your wooden house and mortal 
tenement from side to side, — and there will come 
moments of ecstasy when you will think there is 
none in the world alive but yourself and God. The 

12 



134 THE SEA. 

vast ocean is a closet, that may be as private as was 
ever built in the corner of a dwelling ; a holy of 
holies, as awful and unmolested as that in the old 
Jewish temple ; a seclusion for the heart, which 
the depth of woods, or the sands of Sahara, could 
not exceed. Poets and orators talk of whitening the 
sea with our commerce, and furrowing it with our 
keels. But the canvas of nations on the tremendous 
waste is less than the lightest streak of a cirrus cloud 
on the edge of the summer sky ; and, could the 
traces of every sailor on the huge plain be pre- 
served, instead of immediately vanishing, they would 
appear but as the first lines of the plough on a new- 
found coast. In the sublime imagery of Job, God 
can make the deep boil as a pot of ointment ; but 
to speak of man as vexing or disturbing it with his 
puny activity, is to put the effect for the cause. 
Intellectually, he is lord of the sea, as of the land ; 
but, in the physical fact, he acts less than he is 
acted upon, and all his workmanship is borne with 
a lightness unfelt on the tide. 

But of this power, too, of the sea, the landsman 
has a feeble understanding. It gives us some sign 
of its terrific power as it bursts upon the shore, or 
drives the helpless mariner with its rejecting fury, 
or greets us with the ominous sound of its distant 
roar ; but its thunder dies away, and its fiercest 
assaults are driven back from the earth. We must 
ourselves be subject to its control, to realize its 
might. Go for once, and thoroughly tempt it. From 
its endless rise and plunge, you implore some respite. 



THE SEA. 135 

Deaf as the adder is the unrelenting surge. Nature 
hears no prayers : and here is Nature in her wildest, 
most untamable form. You are thankful to believe 
that above the inexorable nature is One that hears ; 
as your sighs and groans and supplications seem to 
break and pass like the breath that makes them, or 
bubbles of common air that swell and vanish with 
their shining moisture, as each instant comes and 
goes. The winds, not for you, but of their own 
caprice, may lull and keep the peace awhile ; yet 
covertly they conspire to break their bonds, and 
raise the tempest. Even, however, in their hush, 
the sea has a vital heaving of its own, which goes on 
without them all the same. It seems like some 
mysterious giant, bound to carry human creatures 
on their way, but scorning its servile task, and 
shaking them rudely and wilfully on its shoulders as 
they are borne. A bridge, truly arched, is said, from 
actual pressure, to gain in strength of resistance. 
But what words can describe the sea's disdain of 
every weight launched upon its bosom ? It tosses 
and gores, it plays with and wears out, it pierces and 
rends to atoms, whatever it will. Well armed must 
the warrior go to battle with its storms : it will find 
every weak spot or hole in his armor. If one link 
in the coat of mail be ill-woven, there will the thrust 
be sure to be first directed, and the strain to come. 
The builder of houses upon the land may possibly 
slight his work, and escape without detection. Not 
so he whose architecture is for the sea, which seizes, 
even to the smallest bolt or pin, the whole frame of 



136 THE SEA. 

whatever is put to its unceremonious test, makes all 
tremble in its instantaneous grasp, and whatever is 
not thorough in material or construction begin to 
give way. There is no impunity for neglect here. 
For what is loose and unguarded, there is no enemy 
beside so sleepless in vigilance, so resistless in 
attack. 

Like a swordsman, so aware of his superiority that 
he plays with his antagonist, so the monstrous ocean 
sometimes toys with those that tempt its wrath. To 
give amusing instances, I have seen it take a vertical 
pile of plates, and, in a moment, with their shining 
figures, tessellate for square yards the cabin floor. 
The solid urn, that had been resting firm as the mast, 
I have known it overset with a lurch as unforeseen 
as the stealthy spring of a wild beast. It was 
pleased, on occasion of my crossing it, to show its 
favorite trick of sending aboard, for an arrest, one 
of its crested and plumed officers suddenly to collar 
the most experienced sailors, and hurry them the 
length of their floor. Once, at deep midnight, it 
enacted a novelty of somewhat savage merriment, in 
sweeping a heavy iron cable, that lay dinting its 
rusty coils into the planks, with terrific rumble 
athwart the forward deck, so as to rouse the sleepers 
below as at a signal of the crash of doom. But the 
real earnest of its strength I cannot pretend to por- 
tray. Though I saw it hoary with rage, surpassing 
all the armaments of battle ever built, should they 
discharge their thunder together ; though I peered 
from its borders into the storm with which, upon the 



THE SEA. 137 

rough Scottish beach, it wrecked, and then wantonly 
turned completely over and over, a noble vessel ; 
though I saw clearly and often that man's only 
defence against its brute force when aroused is in 
the most adroit submission, and that any sheer con- 
tention would be like helpless infancy set against 
omnipotence, — all my witnessing but constrains me 
to leave the measure of its energy to that imagina- 
tion which all estimates of bulk, or strict lines of 
the balance, rather hinder than assist. 

But, once more, the landsman sees only part of 
the sea's beauty, to leave out which would be to 
omit half the portrait. Yet it is, in great part, a 
terrible kind of beauty. Its monstrous look softens, 
and its motion grows caressing, as it runs into the 
inlets of the shore. Most graciously it courts the 
humanity on its borders with invitations to its broad 
and cool mansions, and coaxes it out upon its open 
floor, to treat it, alas ! too often with savage inhospi- 
tality; and yet, sometimes, after fierce storms, that 
have roughly handled the sailor on either of its sides, 
it will smile, as in my own experience, with halcyon 
days dropped down betwixt the watery poles to 
tempt one out upon the deck, where he will swing 
as gently as the hang-bird in its nest, or seek refuge 
from the warm sunshine in the shadow of the mast. 
Beauty, in general, seems to lurk chiefly in the lines 
where diverse or opposite elements meet together, — 
as with the sky and earth at the horizon, or the land 
and sea upon the beach. Yet are there peculiar 
charms only to be caught far out at sea. The huge 

12* 



138 THE SEA. 

cup, turned from above upon the liquid ball below, 
with their fine assorting of mutual colors, blue and 
gray, as sometimes in smooth embrace meet these 
mighty curves ; the golden disk of the sun, rising, 
a solitary show of unrivalled sublimity, from behind 
the one convex into the other concave ; or of the 
moon, with her splendid silver pillar cast in section 
athwart the dusky waves ; the infinite grace with 
which the ocean makes a ship bow to its power, 
the mysterious witchery of which particular spell 
never wears out or tires the meditative mind, — all 
these things make vastness of scale and grandeur 
of movement fall into the idea and feeling of 
beauty. 

Then there are, at sea, particular spectacles, of 
entrancing interest ; one, at least, of which I must 
take leave to describe. I refer to our encounter 
with a large company of icebergs. Perhaps no other 
sight in the world makes an impression more unique 
and profound. Being in a steamship, we could, in 
the daytime, without peril, draw near to them, and 
get good views, at greater and less distances, of their 
motion and bulk. There they lay, floating along in 
fellowship, the strangest sort of host, of all things 
living or inanimate, in the world. Like the migra- 
tory birds, they were seeking a warmer clime, — not, 
however, to refresh, but lose, their existence. Bits 
of the pole they had broken off from their parent 
source, with the cold instinct of death at their heart 
that they must hurry on to waste away ; and, as each 
day they missed something of their icy frame, and 



THE SEA. 139 

turned uneasily with their shifting weight to and fro 
in the waters, they were themselves so many pro- 
phecies, that whatever is frosty and forbidding in the 
creation must melt in the mildness of equatorial airs, 
and the tropic floods of eternal friendship and love. 
Meantime, they themselves made a pretty sharp 
winter around us ; though, so great was the curiosi- 
ty to survey them, we willingly, at the early dawn, 
breasted the boisterous and cutting wind to gaze 
long at their solemn troop ; and one sea-sick invalid 
of our party was lifted in arms from her couch to 
gaze through a round window, in the side of the 
ship, at these new monuments of power and tokens 
of purity. Of all shapes and sizes, they silently 
swam upon their way. The Lord loves variety in all 
things, — the crystals of the mine, the flowers of the 
field, the mountains of the earth, and also in what be- 
forehand we might think only monotonous, — these 
cones and domes and spires and pyramids — or shall 
they not be called chains of icy hills ? — upon the sea. 
So the eye was drawn to examine, with ever-new 
surprise and delight, this manifold architecture, — 
Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman, by turns. In the 
great draught of water required for their enormous 
and solid bulk, they are not thrown about among the 
billows as the largest ships are, but seem to sail on 
in sublime and stoic disregard, or with but at least 
faint respect, for wind and storm. One tremendous 
mass heaved its bulk not far from us, and, as it swept 
along, seemed a temple of God upon the deep. Its 
foundation sank low where, beneath the superficial 



140 THE SEA. 

action of the fiercest waves, it could rest, without 
rocking, upon waters quiet as the solid granite of 
the land. Its tower shot up like an aspiration to the 
sky. Full in front of the rising sun, it swept on- 
ward, its steeple blazing as never upon the earth 
blazed marble in the light of day ; and whatever 
use it did its part to serve in the great economies of 
nature, it, at least, answered well for any thoughtful 
observer the purpose of worship in the ministry of 
the soul. Slowly southward it moved and faded 
by degrees away, bearing some holy thought in its 
shrine of material sanctity, and taking its place in 
memory for ever — though its temporary and fugi- 
tive being is long since dissolved — among Bethels 
of prayer. 

But, for the fond length of this description, I 
must atone by abstaining from further reference to 
the particular captivations of that beauty of the sea, 
which is as broad and deep as the sea itself ; which 
is sent forth from its surface in clouds, and makes 
the glories of the sky its own in reflections from be- 
neath ; which is full of innumerable changes, and 
yet ever remains essentially the same. 

The interest to us of the sea, as of all material 
objects, lies not merely in its physical characteristics, 
brought to the. cognizance of the senses or the 
measurement of the understanding, but in its rela- 
tions which we may detect with our thoughts and 
feelings. Man is made to be a believing creature ; 
and, if he believes in any thing, he must believe in 
that doctrine of correspondences between the worlds 



THE SEA. 141 

of matter and spirit which Swedenborg was so fond 
of illustrating ; though perhaps Swedenborg did not 
discover all these correspondences, or in every case 
seize the true and real. 

But there are two kinds of people in the world, — 
the literal or prosaic, and the spiritual. The one 
will judge of a thing simply as it appears ; the 
other will have a second sight, and add a second 
meaning. Ask the one, for example, what the sea 
is, and you will get for answer, " It is a great body 
of water, — salt water, — very deep, and covering 
more than two-thirds of the surface of the globe." 
But, by the other, this liquid mass — this piece of 
geography with its mathematical dimenipons — is 
regarded as, beyond the uses and economies of this 
terrestrial planet, an instrument of education. It 
is possible I may fail of the sympathies of either of 
these classes in the doctrine I have to propound 
respecting the import of the sea. Frankly I own 
that I must speak somewhat ill of it. I have some 
grave charges to bring against it ; and find broad 
implications of a very bad sense and intention in its 
huge mass, rolling with such disrespectful sound 
and forward motion. Let who will make a grain of 
allowance for the disgust of a sea-sick voyager ; but, 
looking back now very calmly, I must present the 
sea as an enemy, — the great adverse power. In the 
old Psalms it is pictured as opposed to God himself, 
who overcomes it. The Creator is also described as 
setting bounds to it at the first : " Hitherto shalt 
thou come, but no further ; and here shall thy proud 



142 THE SEA. 

waves be stayed." The sea is proud, then, and of an 
encroaching disposition. Yes, and it is angry too. 
It rages and roars in the record of Holy Writ, as 
well as in our own hearing. It is a restless creature, 
moreover, and never has any peace ; and the wicked 
are compared to it, in its trouble casting up mire and 
dirt. It does not seem to be a Christian thing, but 
a heathen rather. The land is tamed and cultivated, 
and, even in its rudest climes, made smiling, flowery, 
and fruitful; but who shall tame or tether, till or 
alter, the sea ? It remains in its original, everlasting 
wildness and raving. Standing alone, it would, I 
think, hardly teach a man to be any thing better than 
a Manichean, or believer in rival gods. If there be 
aught in the divine providence painfully trying and 
inscrutable, we say, after the sentence of ancient 
piety, " His way is in the sea." When all flesh had 
become corrupt in the sight of Heaven, there came 
for punishment a deluge ; or the sea was made 
universal. So far, indeed, does the Bible go, in its 
relative disesteem and disparagement of the sea, as 
to say that, in the next world, we are going to have 
no more of it. In John's vision of the heavenly coun- 
try, "there was no more sea." And though, in this 
world, it is the abode of a large part of the human 
family, it seems an unnatural dwelling. Man, even 
here, seems properly to be a land animal ; and, as he 
ventures on the sea, a peculiar sickness commonly 
seizes upon him, as though to warn him he is invad- 
ing an alien, unfriendly element, from whose hostile 
threatenings and hazards of ruin he is repelled by 



THE SEA. 143 

incomparable and indescribable preliminary horrors. 
Truly, the sea is man's adverse power ; though, by 
a principle in his nature, superior to the disgust of 
his body or the fear of his soul, man is called to 
struggle with it, to tempt all its jeopardies, to " take 
arms against a sea of troubles " till he turns his foe 
into his benefactor, and from the magazines of wrath 
extorts incalculable treasure. 

The sea, indeed, in the earlier ages of the human 
race, seemed something altogether against them. It 
hemmed them in with the strait limits of its shores ; 
with its combined swell and noise, it menaced and 
affrighted and pressed them back. In the rude 
vessels, which alone they were at first able to con- 
struct, they crept timidly, in fair weather, along the 
coasts ; or, if they ventured farther out, were per- 
haps overtaken by the tempest, and, with loss of life 
and property, cast away. Yet they did not give up 
the contest ; they did not succumb to the fury of 
this terrible monster, and, cowering timidly away 
from the borders of its huge den, own themselves 
beaten, — the for-ever-helpless sport of its wrath and 
vanquished subjects of its sway. They persevered 
in launching upon its unstable, treacherous, irre- 
sistibly heaving bosom. They studied diligently 
what kind of structure would most securely swim 
amid its liquid lapse, and best enable them, in its 
darker moods, to grapple with the rising surge, till 
the experiment and toil of many centuries resulted 
in that crown and glory of all architecture, a perfect 
ship, every line of which, from the curving hull to 



144 THE SEA. 

the tapering masts, the winds and waters taught the 
carpenter to shape and hew, that the almost living 
creature, floating strongly on the surface or bowing 
gracefully before the blast, might cut undaunted the 
breadth of the ocean, and make the very gale that 
howled upon her the means of her furtherance to 
her port. Ay, more : when thus, after all such 
painstaking and unwearied courage, and out of all 
severity and stress of the elements, was fashioned 
this accomplished material messenger, that, in her 
going to and fro, she might make endless multipli- 
cation of the wealth of mankind ; explore and 
populate barbarous countries ; build up a thousand 
shining cities on the harbors which are the outlets 
and inlets of this commerce of the globe ; transport 
arts, letters, and religion, to savage climes ; and 
unveil a new world, which the blue, boundless main 
had long jealously hidden in its breast, — so that, 
under God, we might, for our country and existence 
in a land of liberty, be indebted to a ship. This is 
the weapon which has fought with all the fury of 
the sea, and fetched back immeasurable spoils of vic- 
tory. What, then, is the sea, which is at our very 
doors, but that on whose brink our civilization is 
built ; out of which our forefathers, worn-out sailors, 
escaped to the snow and sand ; from whose assaults 
and foaming, our life, our riches, our prosperity, 
our institutions of freedom, worship, and education, 
and our very humanity, have been washed to the 
firm ground? 

And the sea, — which has required so much 



THE SEA. 145 

courage to cope with itself, — has it not taught man 
to be courageous under every kind of trial on the 
ocean of life ? It has taught us, that, if we yield to 
fear and foreboding on the voyage of our existence, 
we are like the sailor who should lie cowardly and 
darkly down in the bottom of his boat, and let her 
drift towards the rocks before the breeze ; or, at the 
first stroke of the wind or lowering of the sky, 
hasten back spiritless and afraid to his corner, and, 
with all his means and opportunities, bring nothing 
to pass. It has taught us, on the roughest tide of 
affairs, to steer calmly and bravely on through the 
wild commotion. The worst way a ship can behave 
in a gale of wind is, in the technical term of the 
nautical dictionary, to broach to and lose the com- 
mand of her rudder ; for, so placed, she is at once 
roughly tossed about, torn asunder, and soon sinks 
in the awful hollow, which is called the trough of 
the sea. Our self-prostration under disappointment 
is that dreadful hollow, that fatal trough of the sea. 
It sucks up how many ! God from on high, by his 
billows, calls on us, beneath whatever pressure of 
temptation or pain, to rise and stand at the helm. 
Beside only sin, he hates nothing as he does despair. 
If the pilot surrender, all is gone. "What port at all 
can be reached ? 

Among all the occupations of men, there is per- 
haps no figure that speaks with so unmistakable 
emphasis of hard endeavor as the sailor. He has 
fought with the elements. The uneasy motion of the 
deep has rolled him from side to side. Many a dis- 

13 



146 THE SEA. 

mal night has gloomed down upon his sleepless eyes. 
Many a hurricane has fiercely blown, to bronze the 
hue and groove the lines in his hardened cheeks. 
He seems, like his vessel, as you look upon him, to 
be the very creation of the winds and waves, — by 
them made hardy, and equal to all demands in his 
body ; as, by his own exposure and endurance, he 
is made sympathetic and generous too in soul. No 
better or readier subject for kindness and Christian 
care, for the salvation of the gospel and the kingdom 
of God, than he. Let us rejoice in all we have done 
for him, and be ever willing to do more ; for who 
has done more than he and his tribe, in all time, for 
the welfare of humanity, — conscripts as they have 
been to fight our battle with the hostile sea, and 
bring home the spoils for our wealth, comfort, 
and luxury? While missionaries go to savage re- 
gions, leave not him a pagan in this pagan territory 
of the sea ; but render back into his soul your grati- 
tude for his contributions to your earthly estate. 

But we are sailors too, bound to take from him 
example. Does he never fold his hands and shut his 
eyes in dejection, when thick mists gather around 
him ; nor lie patiently locked up even in the prison 
of polar frost ; nor flee when the icebergs in terrible 
glory sweep round him, or maelstroms open their 
yawning chasms beneath; nor retire at the menace 
of the clouds ; nor put about for white, ominous 
crests in the distance ; nor suffer himself to be 
daunted by the whirlwinds of the tropics, or give 
up his reckoning for the gulf-stream, and all the 



THE SEA. 147 

currents of the watery waste ; and, because he does 
not, therefore fulfils his ends, makes the world 
opulent with incalculable gains, and converts that 
which, swollen with arrogant passions, looking 
haughty and revengeful, seemed the enemy of God 
and man, into the most effectual friend and swiftest 
promoter of the race ? And shall navigators over 
this great deep of human life, towards the everlast- 
ing refuge, permit themselves to be stopped amid 
mists of doubt ; or have their heart frozen in them 
by the world's coldness and ingratitude ; or proceed 
without any plan, when no vessel, among all the 
millions that float, ever did so ; or postpone all 
progress to a calm day, — when it is only the dis- 
tressing wind they tremble at, that can carry them 
on with most speed ? No : unfurl the sail, ply 
the oar ; and as the seaman, when all his spars and 
shrouds are rent away, will rig what he calls a jury- 
mast, and by that little help, availing himself of the 
breezes of heaven, still take vessel and cargo safe to 
their destination ; so, when the broad canvas of 
success in life is rent in pieces, there is still some 
resource. Vessels sometimes circle the whole globe 
before, according to the owners' large plan, they can 
settle the voyage. So let us be content to go. 

This is the language that old Ocean breathes from 
all his billows, and out of all his caves. Verily, as 
at midnight, in the driving vapor and the rocking 
surge, I have long paced the noble vessel's deck, 
and over her side, while she pitched to and fro in 
the middle of the Atlantic, strained my eye into the 



148 THE SEA. 

baffling dark, and heard the heavy thump, thump, of 
the unrelenting sea upon her timbers, and yet 
marked her steady, ceaseless ongoing against the 
monstrous and fathomless weight, that impeded and 
stood against her little bulk, an image has entered 
my thought of the brave, heaven-trusting soul across 
this mysterious flood of being, making her grander 
way. To a now distinguished man, as he began his 
career, it was said, " You must not lose heart if you 
do not succeed at first." " Oh, sir," was the reply, 
" he that loses heart, loses every thing ! " 

But this theme must not be closed without my 
saying further, that it is not the boldness of the 
navigator which is alone to be considered, but the 
purpose with which, in his bark of life, he sails this 
tide of time. What is the object of our voyage ? 
Is it our own enjoyment or amusement ? Then 
ours, after all, is but a pleasure-boat, with a merry 
look, a handsome show, — rendering trifling service 
indeed to God or man. Is it our own selfish 
gain and accumulation, by sharp dealing at others' 
expense? Then, much worse, we are but priva- 
teers, however assured our bearing, bent merely on 
plunder. He is not the only pirate who boards 
the weaker vessel to rob and slay on the high seas, 
but whoever is willing to prosper cruelly out of the 
woes and privations of his fellow-men ; land-pirate, 
we say, in no empty phrase. Those are not the only 
false colors which are hoisted by the slaver, or the 
bloody invader ; but every hypocrite, in this great 
voyage of human existence, sails under the same. 



THE SEA. 149 

Do you in truth and candor accost whom you meet ? 
You are the honest merchantman, helping the bene- 
ficial communication and good understanding of all 
the different members of the human family. Do 
you spend freely for others of your substance and 
means, imparting more than you receive, and run- 
ning to the succor of those in need ? You are like 
the ship, in time of famine, despatched to the relief 
of those ready to perish. Like some national ves- 
sels, there are those on this ocean of time who seem 
to exist for the sake of delivering such as are in 
jeopardy ; and, alas ! like armed and quarrelsome 
cruisers, there are jealous and malignant persons, 
who do not seem satisfied till they have attacked 
somebody, and given a fellow-creature pain. What- 
ever be our danger or distress on the flood, though 
like Jonah and David we have sometimes to look up 
to God and cry, " All thy waves and thy billows are 
gone over me," — yet may we all, in the sublime 
words of the Psalmist, find " the Lord on high 
mightier for us than the noise of many waters ; yea, 
than the mighty waves of the sea." 



As I desire my readers, beyond the accidental 
direction of a journey, to trace, if they can, some 
intellectual method and progress in my themes, I 
beg leave to observe, that these essays upon the 
mountains, the rivers, the lakes, and the sea, are to 

13* 



150 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

be regarded as particular illustrations of one general 
topic, — the beauty of the world. What chiefly 
amazes the explorer, is the immense sum of that 
beauty. If any thing can be learned of the disposi- 
tion of the Creator from his doings, infinite lover of 
beauty he must be. What comforting persuasions, 
too, of the feeling, towards his living creatures, in 
one who is the source of material loveliness without 
measure or end ! No hint can I give of the multi- 
tude of things, entrancing me on my way, which 
are necessarily omitted in my report. I should have 
liked to set forth the charms, so unspeakably rich, of 
the Tete Noire, that took us away from Chamouni ; 
of our ascent, half by starlight, half by sunlight, up 
the splendid Val d'Aosta ; of the ride, in a strong 
rain, to Dalaas, over a road heaped and gullied with 
slides of mud and rock, while torrents were spin- 
ning down the mountain sides, and turbulent streams 
sweeping across our very track, and troops of men 
struggling with nature to keep the way in passable 
repair ; and, as our carriage rocked a little fearfully, 
we looked up and saw the huge clefts smoking as 
though they were enormous guns, just fired, in the 
range of whose dread artillery we still stood ; of 
many a chasm, where we gazed clown and beheld the 
watery glimmer so low, "we must fain think the heart 
of nature not fiery, but moist ; even of the sight of 
hills and streams near Stirling ; or of the scores 
of transpicuous rivulets, up and down which we 
passed, because they knew the easiest descents from 
the hills, and therefore took all the paths and 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 151 

vehicles and men along with them after their prac- 
tical counsel as to the most available line in which 
to proceed. 

But these, and a thousand things besides, must be 
left in those octavos of the brain, never to be repre- 
sented in ink and paper, but holding, for the delight 
of a lifetime, bright and unfading pictures, which 
— after all the trouble of getting them engraved on 
those inner tablets is over — make the recollection 
of travel almost more pleasant than travelling it- 
self. 

In all this overflowing wealth of divine grandeur, 
one thing a pilgrim of any sensibility can scarcely 
fail to note, — namely, the evident care of the great 
Author that we should not be overwhelmed with the 
exhibitions of his creative strength, by strewing 
everywhere amongst them the tokens of an enchant- 
ing sweetness and grace. Even amid the most ter- 
rible displays of his might, he seems ever taking 
pains to hide the power, whose full revealing would 
crush our souls into utter despondency and fear. 
He defends us from his sterner attributes with his 
softer, as a parent swings his infant so tenderly in 
his sinewy arms. He interposes, with the flowers, 
the grass, the moss, the dews of heaven, and the 
trickling rivulets, between us and the frightful, 
overhanging rocks. 

I have said that beauty is everywhere, disclosed 
in its grand total at every point of the creation ; 
but I would not underrate the special attractions of 
particular spots because they are made so much the 



15£ BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

subject of exclusive boasting and notorious exagge- 
ration. One cannot belp feeling that the marked 
features of the globe were made to be seen, and even 
from great distances visited ; and that the select traits 
by which one object is discriminated from another, 
of the same kind, are often well worthy of our 
study. It is only when some single place is de- 
scribed as though it were the only gate to the king- 
dom of heaven, and the fortunate creature, who has 
surveyed it, clearly considers himself better and hap- 
pier, and more in the way of salvation, than others 
who have not had his opportunities to be so blessed, — 
or when one foolishly esteems it the great event of 
his life to have gone to some remote region of ter- 
restrial space, though neither Athens nor Jerusalem 
appears to have altered his character a whit, — that 
we are disposed to remind him of first principles, and 
assert the equality of all innocent souls, and the 
supremacy of simple pleasures and moral aims. An 
open imagination will be stored with magnificent 
furniture from a less circuit than sailing round the 
world. He, who never forsook his native fields, 
may, with a fine ear, detect as much sweetness in the 
song of the reapers as he would in the " Yogel " 
among Swiss mountains, or the " Yo, heave ho " of 
the sailors hoisting their canvas at sea. Often the 
very thing that transports one abroad was essentially 
present with him from his childhood, and would 
have transported him at home, had he given it any 
heed. It is wine that enlivens or intoxicates ; not 
necessarily the wine of France or Germany, but the 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 153 

juice of the vine that grows on our western hills 
may be used or abused just as well. So I must 
venture to repeat the sentiment, that every genuine 
quality or influence for the soul is at each man's 
command, and everywhere within reach. A winter- 
view of the cold, blue rim of the sea, from the sum- 
mit of my own town, thrilled my heart as much as 
the environing waste of limitless waters, — though 
possibly I owed part of the delicious shock to a 
recent crossing of that waste, which completed for 
me the galvanic chain. The hills of New Hamp- 
shire, white, from head to foot, in January, were as 
spotless as the Dent d' Argent, the Monch, the 
Shreckhorn or Wetterhorn ; and, to the imagination, 
a mile or two, more or less, in height, did not make 
all, or the most important part of, the difference. 
They who are inclined to use their privileges will " 
learn that the great Maker has been more impartial 
in the manifestation of his wonders than they may 
have supposed. "Also he hath set the world in 
their heart ; " and, as they turn inward, they will 
find it occupying the mysterious inner rooms of 
their being with fair forms and shows sublime for 
evermore. Our enjoyment or improvement from the 
scenes of nature, wherever we may be, depends not 
merely on the object seen, but very greatly, too, on 
the mood with which we see it. A soul dulled by 
familiarity, asleep in custom, or that never had its 
spiritual faculties waked, may be in the presence of 
the most enchanting or tremendous phenomena of 
the universe, yet remain unmoved to any pleasurable 



154 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

interest, or possibly affected only with weariness or 
disgust. But, where the appetite is keen, there is 
no table for feasting like that spread by Nature. 
Moreover, we partake of her bounty freely, without 
constraint or compunction. Sitting at the loaded 
board of a man who has invited us to his party, un- 
less his courtesy is the very noblest, we experience 
some uneasiness and deduction from our content. 
We feel ashamed of so much cost and labor for us. 
But, amid the most plentiful provision of nature, we 
are unabashed, — God can furnish it all so easily ! 
His and ours is the willing mind. 

I take no trouble to excuse myself for such sug- 
gestions at the close of one great division of my 
work. The world serves but a low purpose when it 
has only given gravitation to our feet, and a garden 
for our hunger. We miss its best employment, 
until it becomes to us also the ladder of the patri- 
arch, and we see angels ascending and descending. 
It is a poor, earthy world, exiled from the glorious 
fellowship of the celestial spheres, unless it connect 
itself with the Invisible in our minds, as it does 
with systems, the eye never saw, over our heads. 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 



In ecstasy the human creature stands 
Before the world built wondrous by God's hands ; 
The while God's spirit, through the creature's will, 
Buildeth another world more wondrous still. 
Art is man's nature, ere the earth he trod : 
Man's nature is transcendent art of God. 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 



The whole intent of the present essay may move only 
to doubt and surprise. To most persons, probably no 
proposition could be a more decided paradox than 
that of the superiority of art to nature. Nay, not 
a few may consider the statement impious. u What 
man has added to the world, is finer than the world 
itself !" they may exclaim. "The thought is blas- 
phemy." But why blasphemy ? What is added is 
added by the soul, — is it not ? And what is the 
soul, but the most admirable part of God's own 
creation ? How, then, does it contradict the spirit 
of reverence, if it please him to make the soul his 
tool of further results nobler than the rudeness of 
the rocks and the clods of the valley ? Besides, it 
is among the Creator's first recorded commands to 
his children, to subdue the earth, — a direction im- 
plying some excess or departure in nature which he 
would have them overrule. In substance he says 
to them, " I have made the world for you ; but I 
have made it in the rough, and left it for you to 

14 



158 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

finish. I have but hewn out the model, and left it 
for you to polish. I did not wish to give it to you 
unimprovable, but so that your own faculties would 
be unfolded in your labors to perfect it." 

Of course it is not meant that art is above nature 
in every respect. It is inferior in mechanical extent, 
as in exact proportions and exquisite coloring ; but if 
may be superior in its expression of intelligence and 
moral meaning. In saying this, I include now in 
nature only the material world. Art can make 
nothing so vast and splendid as the sun; she can- 
not tinge her work with a hue so lovely as the rosy 
red that blushes at dawn through the eastern sky; 
but she can put into her productions a spirituality 
and intellectual purpose contained in no mere terres- 
trial elements. Art cannot imitate that life and 
motion in nature which make pictures ever fresh 
and changing through thousand shapes and hues ; 
but she can seize and arrest the postures of her finest 
grace, presenting, not common, but beautiful, nature, 
and at the same time indicate designs, affections, 
achievements of humanity, which are the rarest 
glories of history and the world. When once a 
natural scene was praised as finer than any landscape 
could be in picture, a painter replied, in substance, 
" No : the canvas may be more precious than the 
clay." There would be no end to a quotation of 
instances exemplifying this doctrine. When Miriam 
is painted in triumph dancing to her timbrel, and 
the Red Sea angry in the distance ; or, to turn to 
another point an illustration of Ruskin's, when the 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 159 

building of Carthage is represented to the imagina- 
tion by some little boys sailing their boats of shingle ; 
or when the rays of the sun are gathered round the 
benign face of Jesus, — there is not only an effect 
which neither land nor ocean nor the orb of day, 
alone or all together, can equal, but a purpose and 
situation for the higher intellect and the heart, which 
no ordinary arranging of natural elements in the 
outward universe suggests ; for the simple reason, 
that, perfect as it may be, it is in a different and 
lower plane of comparison. 

When Nature, indeed, attempts a beautiful thing, 
she succeeds, while the artist is apt to fail ; but the 
triumphs of art are the most glorious things visible in 
this lower scene. They are nature extended, nature 
ripened and consummated, nature in bloom, — not 
the gross body of nature, but nature's more delicate 
members, refined senses, and rational organs. God 
has made the crude world first with his hands ; but 
this secondary world of art — the flower of the first, 
if I may say so — he has made with his spirit, by the 
inspirations of genius in the breasts of his children. 
The glory of both the worlds belongs to him. Every 
thing fair or good is traceable to one source alone, 
in the infinite beauty and holiness of his mind. It 
is, therefore, no insult, but a tribute, to him, to set 
human art above material nature. 

But it has not been the common idea. So far 
from thinking that God gave the world to man rag- 
ged and precipitous, that his hands of flesh might 
make it soft and habitable, we have been taught that 



160 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

this very ragged and precipitous character of the 
earth is owing to man's sins ; that the crags and 
ravines, yea, also, whatever is monstrous or malicious 
in the brute creation, — as serpents and tigers, — 
are the injuries inflicted on the world by human 
depravity, — man, fallen man, having touched the 
originally fair and spotless frame of things only to 
mar and pollute and inflame it. Fearful have been 
man's sins, and sad in the world their consequences. 
But to refute a doctrine of the results of human 
agency so sweeping, we need not summon science 
into the field. We need only remember that the 
primeval command to populate the world, in order 
that it might be replenished and subdued, was given, 
not after, but before, the fall ; nay, the serpent, that 
tempted Eve, and was thought to be the most malig- 
nant of beasts, preceded the transgression, and, of 
course, could not have been the consequence of 
it. No more were the gulfs and caverns and rifts 
and mountain-peaks, into which superstitious creed- 
makers, in verse or prose, have fancied that the 
world shuddered at the first iniquity ; no more so 
because God gave the earth at the outset as some- 
thing to be subdued, and therefore gave it, not like 
a cultivated garden or an ivory ball, but wild and 
rank and broken. 

The earth injured by the fingers of man? Nay: 
it has been mended and glorified. What, without 
those fingers, would the earth have been ? A scene 
of tangled overgrowth of enormous weeds, of stony 
desolation, of forests falling useless into their own 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 161 

decay, of a vegetation mixing its vain excess with 
confused rottenness, and savage creatures roaming 
through the prodigal waste, and turning all into a 
den, a lair, and a sty. What is it with those fingers, 
— little instruments, yet busily at work from the 
foundation of things ? It is a cleared territory. It 
is a cultivated field. It is an adorned abode of a 
knowing and aspiring, though imperfect and faulty, 
race, — a race, that, in comparison with its capacities 
of virtue and happiness, in comparison with its final 
destiny of more spiritual being and heavenly pro- 
gress, may indeed be described as wandering and 
lost, but yet a race, which, with all the wickedness 
of its offspring and all the weakness of its abortions, 
has ennobled the sphere it dwells in, almost beyond 
its own knowledge or imagination. Belonging to 
no sect in religion, I must, as a pilgrim, hold this to 
be the theology of travel. By the angel that first 
saw it come reeking and rocky, or inwardly swelling 
and flaming, from primeval chaos, the earth now, in 
its improvement so immense, could scarce be recog- 
nized. Depravity has, indeed, often blighted that 
improvement, and kept it back. The idle and faithless 
and unprofitable of its members, numerous as they 
may have been, have dropped by the way into their 
graves, little noticed. The sons of mischief, who 
have sought out diabolic inventions, have gained for 
their doings and monuments a foothold relatively 
small to the space which the children of worth and 
genius, as the servants of God, have beautified with 
constructions of utility, and exhibitions of splendor, 

14* 



162 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

and seeds of all wholesome and nourishing growth, 
for the blessing and honor of their kind. This was 
God's design from the beginning. And no man 
shall convince me that the Maker himself has wholly 
failed of his purpose in man's creation, — that he is 
quite disappointed in the race of his children, and 
finds, after all, in the humanity he took pains to 
fashion and inspire, only a grand mistake, his sen- 
tence recorded in Holy Writ only falsified. No : 
sinners and rebels have abounded ; but the whole 
moral world has not wheeled out of its orbit. 

While, however, the facts will not bear out those 
who would teach that the human race, as a whole, 
has abused and spoiled the world, neither will they 
second the sentiment of that other class of transcen- 
dental philosophers and nature-worshippers, who 
think man's additions to the world have been slight 
and puny, overlaying and obscuring too, as far as 
they go, rather than illustrating and exalting, the 
original grace and grandeur of the globe. Their 
philosophy does not seem to be philosophy, any more 
than their rivals' religion seems to be religion. The 
additions of man to nature insignificant ! The roads 
into which he has cut hill and desert; the bridges 
with which he has spanned rivers and vales; the 
keels with which he has furrowed lakes and seas ; 
the grains and fruitage with which he has made 
slopes and meadows green and flowery to the ends 
of the earth ; the houses for habitation, halls for 
justice, temples of worship, with which he has 
crowned bank and shore ; the cities that shine far 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 163 

by night as by day; a million interior chambers 
decorated with pencil and chisel, and ten million 
wheels and bands, weights and edges, moving and 
pressing, sundering and joining, to fashion the uten- 
sils of comfort and furtherance, with a roll that never 
stops, and a hum that dies not out of the air, — 
all insignificant and poor, compared to the simple, 
plain face of material nature with which the process 
began ! Instead of hiding from sight, with our 
negligence and folly, behind the monstrous back of 
what we consider the necessarily sinful stock from 
which we sprang, is it not far better to be kindled 
by whatever example of industry has been presented 
by mankind ? 

But let us consider the testimony. One of the 
first and chief enterprises of men has been to make 
paths by which they could communicate and deal 
with one another; and this making of paths, — has 
it harmed the world, which it has changed from an 
uneven mass of hinderances and obstructions into a 
succession of level floors, running by gentle ascents 
and declinations through easy portals into almost 
endless apartments, converting the vast wilderness 
into a magnificent dwelling ? 

Let me refer to, perhaps, the grandest of these 
passages on the globe, — that of the Stelvio, — being 
the highest practicable carriage-road in Europe, run- 
ning over the Tyrolese Alps at a point nearly two 
miles above the level of the sea. The scene which 
it traverses might, one would think, well take off all 
attention from any work of human hands. Enough 



164 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

to amaze and delight are even the entry and bare 
approach through deep gorges and along rocky beds, 
furrowed with often raging torrents, their sides 
ploughed with descending avalanches, across whose 
recent stony deposits, perhaps at the moment of 
your passing laced with mountain cascades, horse 
and vehicle must be carefully supported and led. 
Gazing up, you see the lofty ramparts of nature 
wreathed in pale or in lurid vapor, as though parks 
of a celestial ordnance had been opened in the recent 
storm ; and hostile signals still displayed, as from a 
fort against a coming foe. In some places the track 
has been swept away ; but the inhabitants have 
rushed forth with peaceful weapons of husbandry to 
shape a new line, or throw over the current a safer 
bridge. Looking down into the river that dashes 
far below, you may observe its banks guarded with 
fortifications of floating timber or solid walls, to keep 
these inland waves from ravaging some adjoining 
nook of cultivation or more distant field. But, for- 
ward, you behold the path, like a living creature, 
climbing undaunted still, scaling the steep, or, where 
the rise is too sudden, traversing from side to side, 
as a vessel tacks to make headway against the wind, 
till, as it steadily gains upon the monstrous bulk of 
the upheaved earth, the sharp peaks and oval sum- 
mits of the upper air, white as Purity's own form, 
begin to peer down upon your vision. But, right 
up, in the face of unmelting frosts and eternal snows, 
glides your road so smoothly, that your pace is with- 
out a break or jar. And now, your eye, reaching 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 165 

on, catches sight of its farther, higher progress on 
the main, central elevation you are to surmount. It 
shines zigzag afar, like the teeth of an enormous 
saw, that, from underneath, has cleft the hills. It 
hangs still farther beyond for miles up and down the 
awful brow, thinned by distance, as though a spider's 
web were spun from point to point to glimmer in 
the beams of heaven, or the everlasting rocks were 
sharpened to a cimeter's edge along the front of 
every beetling precipice with which the countenance 
of the giant of the range is seamed. But forth you 
fare, and find the airy thread continually becoming 
your convenient path. Terraced on foundations 
swelling at the base to resist the sap of the ele- 
ments, and the crush of falling matter from above ; 
roofed in some places where the slides are wont sud- 
denly to come, that the mighty weight of ice and 
earth may shoot, possibly over the very head of the 
passenger, into the tremendous vale below ; boring 
its way through the stubborn rock, out of whose fis- 
sures the stalactites drip ; winding by the feet of 
glaciers and beside banks of midsummer snow ; 
standing a moment on the top to command the 
glorious view ; and then plunging, the traveller 
with it, in the same absolute security, down the 
awful transalpine gullies, from whose bottom he 
looks back in astonishment to see where he has 
descended without terror, his wonder not ceasing 
till, by the bright streams and clear skies and soft 
verdure, and perhaps rare fruits, of Italy, he is 
taken into an embrace as mild as the elemental 



166 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

grasp before has threatened to be severe and dread- 
ful. 

Nature or art, — which is the superior ? They 
are here brought face to face into direct comparison. 
Infinite indeed is the beauty, terrible the splendor, 
of the natural scene. "Walking alone, away from 
my companions, in that silence of solitary nature so 
impressive when undisturbed by the sound of voices 
or the rattle of wheels ; mounting angle after angle, 
and sitting on the ragged stones or hanging on the 
sharp declivities ; I made my temple in the immense 
chamber, with columns of primeval granite, from 
whose snowy capitals, in a carving with which no 
marble could vie, shone down upon my fancy the 
very holiness of God. 

But, great as was 'the natural scene, the work of 
art, girdling the mountain-chain, was an unspeakable 
enhancing of its charms. The tide of human life, 
pouring through from kingdom to kingdom, was 
grander than the waterfalls, foaming from the spot- 
less snows through the dark ravines. What was 
built by man was finer than the earth it was built 
upon ; for it was, even according to Holy Writ, the 
earth replenished and subdued ; and I felt that 
the eye of God rested with more pleasure on the 
finished work than on the first roughness, because 
approving his children for their obedience to the 
original command ; nay, yet more let me say, be- 
cause glad in himself to see his own instrument and 
tool of the human soul, with all its keen faculties 
and strong forces, in his handling accomplishing the 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 167 

ends for which it was by him fashioned and designed, 
and, for the perfection of its doings, only wanting, in 
its rest from its labors, as God rested at the begin- 
ning, to give him all the glory. 

And man only the architect of ruin in this world, — 
his greatness seen, as it has been said, in the ruin he 
makes ? Man, by his sin, the destroyer of the earth, — 
breaking it into precipices and gulfs ? Nay, man is 
the mender of the world, — repairing it from the pre- 
cipices and gulfs into which, by the Creator, it has 
been broken, for the very purpose of calling forth 
his creature's abilities and virtues to restore and 
complete it. Speaking simply in illustration of a 
point which I might set forth in many pictures, let 
me briefly refer to a pass of a character quite differ- 
ent from the Stelvio, — that of the Finstermiinz. It is 
a frightful hollow, running down as near to the gate 
of hell as its glittering summits rise on either hand 
towards the door of heaven. The ebony and ivory 
gates of the heathen poets are equally in sight. Our 
road passed midway between the broad curve above, 
and the profound sweep below. Like insects, we 
clung to the wall, while we gazed at once into the 
depth of heaven and the bowels of the earth. If 
the upward passes are sublime, such a comparatively 
downward one is tremendous. In the gulf, round 
which the mountains tower, the huge masses and 
enormous features of matter are brought more fear- 
fully near than they can be in any other situation. 
You feel as within the walls of a huge natural build- 
ing in which the beams are the strata of the earth ; 



168 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

or, rather, the space you occupy resembles the hold 
of a ship, a little less regular, indeed, than that seen 
from the mountain at the Notch of the White Hills, 
yet cut with a stroke far grander. But, from all its 
savage magnificence, one spectacle succeeded in tak- 
ing off my eye. It was that of a troop of laborers, 
who, betwixt us and the heights overhead, were 
turning the overhanging bluffs into a new causeway 
that should divide the pit and the celestial peak. 
How delicately its beautiful arches were springing 
over every sharp descent, while the refuse rocks and 
gravel were rolling from the hands and tools of the 
workmen down the steep ! The fine leaps of those 
bridges, spanning streams and gulfs, were not like 
the leapings of the mountain-goat, now here and 
now away, but wrought into permanent stone, that 
the traveller might neither leap nor stumble. We 
were among the last who should traverse the Finster- 
miinz by the harder, though wilder, path below ; but 
we were only a handful of the millions of pilgrims 
who, in the long courses of ages, shall have their 
astonishment there diverted from the dreadful gashes 
of nature to the graceful victories of art. 

I have given but one or two pictures out of a 
score in my memory no less striking. Had I space, 
I should not fear to proceed in this parallel of art 
with nature throughout, and show, with illustration 
after illustration, that the cultured field is more 
beautiful than the primitive plain ; the builded and 
finely proportioned house, than the timber or the 
tree ; the vineyards, than the hills along the banks 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 169 

of the Rhine or the Danube ; the tower and castle, 
than the vantage-ground on which they are reared ; 
the mine, channelling through the mountain's core, 
and opening the secret treasures of nature to sparkle 
in the light of the explorer's lamp, than its lofty and 
fruitless, though sunlit, top; the mechanical con- 
trivance, than the wood or ore ; the electric wire, 
that runs, a sudden publisher, amid soaring Alpine 
crags, than the huge needles of rock by which it is 
surrounded, or the stray lightning that shivers their 
points, — all these achievements of man, as we call 
them, being but, by man's employment and subordi- 
nate agency, the matured workmanship and fulfilled 
glory of God. Yes, this was most startling and 
admirable, in the lonely wayfaring along dim heights, 
to see the faithful telegraph stretch through galleries 
of rock by my side ; or, having clambered with fear 
after a prospect near the top of some well-nigh inac- 
cessible and seldom-ascended mountain, to observe 
the thin but fertile soil in every crevice, defended 
with walls for the grape to grow purple in the 
southern sun, in a long stairway of gardens even to 
the plains ; or, when winning some post of observa- 
tion, whose frost-bitten height would endure no cul- 
ture, in some watchman's little shed to be dazzled 
with gems wrung from the mountain's heart or 
shaggy flank, and wrought to throw back the light 
of heaven purer than could its far-reaching head. 
Ah ! even in trifles the art of man is more curious 
and astounding than that nature which is but the 
block he cuts. No : it is not the world that most 

15 



170 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

amazes or delights ; but what this tender-skinned 
creature, this slightly-figured inhabitant, with his 
animal form and his immortal spirit, has done to it, to 
replenish and subdue it. 

I am necessarily confined to a mere poverty of 
most briefly described instances. But take, if you 
will, the ocean itself, as one of the confessedly sub- 
limest wonders of the creation. When one considers 
its width and depth, its billowy motion under the 
winds into the clouds, its incalculable duration, in 
ages that no arithmetic can compute, rocking from 
side to side, to submerge, now one continent, and 
now another, or thrusting up volcanic islands as can- 
dles out of its profound abyss to flame along its level 
floor, it becomes a phenomenon of entrancing in- 
terest. And when, setting sail from the shore, one 
tempts for himself its heavy swell or swift-rising 
crest, and learns by experience that in the most 
balmy season nobody knows what it will do, how 
speedily and terribly its features may change, he 
must fain choose it, in his adorations, as one of the 
most expressive embodiments and emblems of Al- 
mighty Power. But what is this little floating work 
of art, moving across the ocean's breadth, with even 
stroke, like a swimmer's, casting aside the irregular 
dash of the waves, with interior revolution propel- 
ling its own weight, independent of calm or gale, 
heedless of night or day ? What is it ? A house, 
not built on a rock, but on the treacherous water, 
that slips every moment from beneath ; a school of 
science, with almost numberless discoveries in daily 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 171 

practice ; an inn, not as yonder in the splendid city's 
square, but in a wilderness of waves, so vast that all 
the ten million sails by which it is specked could be 
at once upon it placed out of each other's sight ; a 
domestic society of families, meeting in the humane 
courtesy of all nations from the ends of the earth ; 
a governmental polity, wherein law and order hold 
with freedom even balance ; a board of bounty, to 
which sea and land, field and garden, tropic and 
temperate climes, yield supplies ; and, lastly, a 
church of God, through whose windows, on holy- 
day, — ah ! I well remember it, — gushes out the 
sound of sacred anthems to soften the screaming 
winds, and catch the listening ear with grandeur 
beyond the elemental roar. Ah ! the child wonders 
at every thing before he wonders at the greatest of 
marvels in himself; and the sailor may think his 
ship an inconsiderable thing amid the surrounding 
fury of the tempest. But the reflecting mind will 
have its attention more spell-bound with that small 
mote, rising and sinking in the surge, than with the 
enormous waste which it so surely circles. 

In this great ocean is an island. Before the reign 
of human art began, it was a worthless tract, fought 
for by savage tribes, that roamed over its damp and 
unproductive soil. Into what, by art, has that nature 
been transformed ? If I call it a jewel of the earth, 
the splendor of whose gloss transcends the value of 
the original stone; if I call it a jar, charged with 
fearful thunders to shake the bulk of the globe ; 
if I call it a house, many-mansioned, with lines arch- 



172 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

ing over hill and vale, to shelter and feed increasing 
myriads of men ; if I call it a machine, lifting from 
under its own foundations material and fuel for 
work, with which it fashions almost every thing 
needed for the comfort and furtherance of a civil- 
ized race ; if I call it a garden, in which scarce a 
weed or barren spot is suffered to exist; if I call 
it a harbor for ships, a court of law, a temple of 
religion ; if I call it the first cradle in which our 
own infancy was somewhat rudely, though not to us 
disadvantageously, rocked : and then allow you to 
make what exceptions in it of wrong and misery 
you will to the general description, — in which of 
these types would you recognize the ENGland, — our 
mother England, — that has, by the astonishing vir- 
tue of human art, taken the place of that rock- 
bound, storm-smitten, savagely possessed desert of 
old? 

Yes, art is superior to, or an advance upon, nature. 
There are arts of mischief, I know ; but they are 
only as the pick-lock of the thief, the stamp of the 
forger, the blade of the murderer, — inferior excep- 
tions to the measureless blessing of the arts of peace. 
Glory to God, who requires man to replenish the 
earth and subdue it ! Private villany cannot match 
the wide beneficence of man's use and application 
of nature's laws, to transfigure Nature herself. Even 
the passionate conflicts of warring nations, present- 
ing still so horrible a spectacle of proud and poli- 
tic but unmeasured bloodshed, must subside before 
the march of growing industry, as conflicts in the 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 173 

elements are said to become more rare with the clear- 
ing up and cultivation of the ground ; till the sword 
shall be left to serve but as the emblem of justice 
and instrument of occasional vengeance, and the fort 
everywhere become, what in many places it already 
is, a sleeping guard, whom no inroads arouse. 

After all, it is but the lesser workings of art to 
which I have, as yet, referred. Its nobler service 
is yet to be described. But though mechanical 
achievements, the lowest grade of the efforts of art, 
have here occupied us, even they suffice to establish 
my proposition. And these achievements, already 
wondrous as they are, so far from being concluded, 
are but begun. "When the cable, to hold the tele- 
graphic wire, on that remarkable steppe, about two 
miles below the surface of the water, shall run across 
the ocean, and the two hemispheres shall be bound 
together by a flash of lightning in a moment of 
time, and reports of all the doings of civilized man 
shall flow in a current as regular as the revolution of 
the globe, and fifty thousand times as fast, we may 
admit it to be a phenomenon more marvellous than 
mountains or rivers or lakes or seas. 

If, in fine, there be any one to style this account 
of the superiority of human art to material nature a 
piece of self-glorifying and dangerous praise of man- 
kind, I reply, first, that there is in it no absolute 
credit to man at all, but only to Him who ordained 
it, and gave the means and powers for it, and whose 
mere agent man is in carrying it on ; nay, whose 
prediction, from the foundation of the world, man 

15* 



174 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

but brings to pass in every step of it. I reply, next, 
that the achievements of humanity, so far from being 
an honor, are only a reproach to any of its past or 
present members, who, by reason of sloth, have 
failed to increase, or by malignity of wickedness 
have only reduced, them. And I reply, lastly, that, 
the greater this glory which I have celebrated, the 
more notorious and overwhelming the shame of 
every individual who has not brightened it into new 
lustre, in some way of his art and duty, by contribu- 
ting his particular share to the improvement of the 
world. 

The hopeless feeling with which one undertakes 
to describe Nature, or reads his own description, is 
only aggravated in regard to any account he may 
give of the trophies of Art. He finds he cannot tell 
what is in her first chamber and on her lowest shelf. 
How I am afflicted by the poverty of what I have 
said, as, at the moment of tracing these characters, 
there rush back upon me — at first in a splendid con- 
fusion, in the halls of fancy, which I have no time 
to analyze, and which it would take folios to record 
— the contents of a hundred museums, displaying 
those victories over matter, so much nobler than of 
man over his brother man ! I try to single out, as 
within the range of my present aim, the meanest de- 
partment in this register of spiritual conquests ; and 
I am at once overwhelmed with a multitude of shin- 
ing objects that come upon the mind, as upon the 
conspiring woman came the soldiers' shields in the 
Roman story. Such an accumulation, for instance, 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 175 

as that in the Green Vault, of the Saxon princes in 
Dresden, which probably exceeds every similar one 
in the world, would reward the virtuoso's years of 
study, and can be only slightly comprehended, far 
less explained to others, by the passing visitor. He 
can afford but a glance of his eye for the diamond 
and onyx and pearl and opal, of untold value, set in 
a workmanship of cunning, never perhaps to be 
equalled again. As he passes through the glittering 
succession of chambers, with inward amazement he 
exclaims, How the treasures of Nature have been 
rifled and magnified! How her elements have 
been refined and raised to new powers! Or how 
she herself, at the bidding of man and the moving 
of his finger, has sent the representatives of her 
finest materials, the very glory and flower of her con- 
stituency, from all the widths of her domain, and 
depths of her bosom, to please the sight and instruct 
the heart of her proudest tenant ! Transparent crys- 
tals and gems, white and red and yellow and blue, 
as it were a solid rainbow from the rocky mines ; 
iron and steel and stone, as though they not only 
danced after some Apollo's harp, but exalted them- 
selves into nobler shapes, and divided themselves into 
figures of grace, as the music of thought fell on 
their dull ears ; ivory and every precious wood, 
carved into such proportions and expressions, as if 
their final cause had not been to play any part in 
animal or vegetable life, but to be channels for com- 
municating intelligence and feeling between crea- 
tures of a spiritual and immortal being ; the precious 



176 SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 

metals, with imagination's forgery transformed into 
a currency of grace and beauty, more precious to 
the heart, more enriching the soul, than all the cir- 
culations of trade ; the housings and accoutrements, 
lances and spears, of war, so finely fashioned and 
richly adorned, as if, after all, they had not been 
meant for the bloody ends of actual battle, but to be 
the instruments of delight rather than destruction, 
and to blaze for admiration instead of being crusted 
with gore ; and nobler things than all these, flowing 
into the higher circles of art, which I have not yet, 
in my narrative, presumed to enter, in crucifixes in 
bronze, and paintings of sacred story in enamel, — 
this hint, in a scanty enumeration of cold sentences, 
may barely suggest the wealth of such a collec- 
tion. 

Shall I go from Dresden to Munich, and draw out, 
in poor words, the lustrous array of specimens made 
by royal patronage, till the genius of classic and that 
of romantic schools and eras seem in close embrace 
together ; and one, wandering, as in a trance, through 
chamber after chamber, and building after building, 
finds himself questioning whether he has not, in 
praising former exhibitions, misplaced the wonder of 
the world, and really discovered it for the first time 
now ; the capacity of the mind is so limited, or its 
attention so exhaustible, that one set of objects 
crowds out another, and even the faculty of judg- 
ment is, for the time, lost ? Or shall we, to see how 
gorgeously art can dispose the means furnished by 
nature, stand in Paris among the Gobelin tapestries, 



SUPERIORITY OF ART TO NATURE. 177 

and marvel at landscapes and social scenes, in silk, 
from the loom, as fresh and lively as ever dropped 
from the pencil ? Or shall we peruse the painted 
porcelains at Sevres, where the old masters are copied 
so accurately, for the delectation of princes, that, if 
they were to come back from the dead, they could 
hardly decide which was their own work, — that 
dim with age upon the canvas, or that so brightly 
flashing from the burnt clay ? 

But questions or statements on this subject are 
alike vain. One cannot travel far in this sphere of 
art without feeling that it verily is another creation 
added to the first; put forth by human faculties, 
within and around the gross material planet, to rival 
its finer parts and products ; provided for by the 
inspiration of the Almighty, and so redounding 
altogether to his glory, while he intends by it to 
educate his intellectual creature, and lift him up to 
himself. 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 



Art, how thy finer glories rise 
Beyond all scope of space or size ! 
Creation to thy finger bends, — 
To cunning mastery condescends. 

Yet thou obeisance too dost own, 
Taking from hand unseen thy crown ; 
Reigning in light, with noiseless word 
A shining witness of the Lord. 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 



I have already adduced illustrations of the power of 
art to bring the ends of the earth together with 
roads ; to turn the sea from a gulf of separation into 
a bond of union with ships ; to convert the rank or 
barren soil into wholesome fertility with culture ; 
and to promote social intercourse, multiply riches, 
and add to every kind of comfort with numberless 
inventions. But, in the nobler service of religion, 
art seems to feel herself peculiarly interested and 
honored, breathes a loftier inspiration, bends to her 
task with a purer zeal, and produces her most endur- 
ing masterpieces. She scatters her other manifold 
achievements as a prince strewing gifts among the 
needy children of men ; but she tenders her sacred 
labors with a bowed and worshipping head to the 
decoration of Zion, and the acceptance of the Lord. 
She leads mankind to that shrine of their Maker 
which she has beautified for their blessed captivity. 
In that deliberation or argument which a man holds 
with himself, whether he will be religious or not, he 

16 



182 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

must meet this plea, not only of human instincts or 
wants, and of holy books or Scriptures, but also of 
the most constraining and magnificent accomplish- 
ments of art. 

If I may be pardoned the appearance of egotism 
in such a piece of autobiography, I would say, that, 
having spent the substance of my studious life as a 
reader and a thinker, a different mode of mental 
occupation lately presented this plea of art with 
especial force. During my long journey, I closed 
all the volumes of human learning, — every printed 
page of genius, in logic or poetry or eloquence, save 
only to peruse my morning or evening chapter in 
the Bible. Intense active engagements and per- 
petual motion required me also to let slip the mul- 
tifarious threads which my busy thoughts had for 
many years been spinning to their various likely 
conclusions. My whole weaving establishment of 
speculation was closed. No new patterns of schemes 
or theories for the whole season were introduced. 
Nothing issued from that purely internal source, 
from which both a very active brain sends out its 
fancies, and the spider draws its web. Nor did I 
care to have any thing to do with the intellectual 
spinning and weaving of other people. Books, from 
having been for many years my longing and delight, 
when I could be excused from other toils to drink 
in their instruction and refreshment, came to look 
unattractive, almost repulsive, to my mind. Shak- 
speare and Milton themselves lay unheeded, their 
spell, for the time, broken ; and when, towards the 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 183 

end of this period, I opened, in a brother-student's 
library, the leaves of the journals stating the fresh 
facts and recent reflections with which the minds of 
men were occupied, the eyes, so long disused from 
published matter, were dazed, and quivered ; the head 
refused to follow the train of phrases and sentences, 
and turned in disgust away. Yet, during all this 
time, may I presume to declare, I had been a reader 
and thinker nevertheless ? I had read objects, and 
not words. I had read the solid things around me, 
and not descriptions in verse and prose. I had been 
perusing the substantial memorials, stamped on the 
face of nature, of human action, aspiration, or suffer- 
ing, and not the second-hand story, or the tenth- 
repeated commemoration thereof, by compilers of the 
pen. From this method of reading the big volume 
of the world, whose covers are continents, whose 
binding is the chain of hills and seas, whose 
clauses are ancient buildings, and its alphabet gold 
and silver and brass and stone, I have come to affirm 
that the great and glorious passages in that volume 
are of religion ; that the letters, which art has 
stamped for the Divinity in this huge folio of the 
earth, are the most shining and enduring letters in 
its compass. The monuments of religious faith are 
the noblest of all monuments reared by the hand of 
man. It is not with any obsolete import, but only 
increased emphasis, that one may repeat David's old 
exulting invitation, to walk about Zion, and go round 
about her. Ah ! one could walk about that Zion of 
the holy city of Jerusalem which he intended, and 



184 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

go round about her bulwarks and towers and palaces, 
in a brief day's journey. But what feet shall obey 
the royal poet's injunction now, when the Zion that 
we mean is no single town, with its soaring temple 
and fortified wall, and no collection even of Jewish 
tribes into a province of the haughty empress of the 
world; but when its defences and decorations have 
stretched beyond measure and number ; when its 
inhabitants are the foremost communities, its ram- 
parts the chief kingdoms, and its shrines the archi- 
tectural glories of the globe ? 

The builder of Zion is Art. Valuable, and now 
well-nigh indispensable, are the other contributions 
of art to the furtherance and the finest civilization 
of mankind. But her splendid indorsement of re- 
ligion is the most conspicuous specimen of her 
handwriting ; and, while it is to earthly creatures a 
precious confirmation of the rights of her elder sis- 
ter, it is, moreover, the most lasting token of her own 
fame. Why should it not be so ? If so much cun- 
ning device and masterly execution can go into a path, 
a mill, a tool, a vessel, — matters of pure outward 
utility, — why should not that worship of the Most 
High, which is the transcendent emotion of the hu- 
man heart, lift its standards with an exceeding lustre 
and eminence proportioned to its own superiority ? 
If the lower efforts and comparatively mean exhibi- 
tions of this strange and marvellous faculty of art 
be not useless and vain ; if to some real purpose, for 
man's welfare, wheels and bands have been adjusted, 
channels dug, and lines of communication run, and 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 185 

there be a valuable consideration of personal and 
social benefit returned for this outlay of effort and 
means, — shall it be nothing but a failure, a waste, 
and a defeat, when Art takes a higher flight, and 
throws herself into her grander endeavors, to build 
and adorn shrines of homage to the living God ? 
Shall the sacrifices brought by the spirit of beauty 
be a despised and worthless offering, while those of 
earthly economy are acceptable, and counted for great 
gain ? No, calculating, critical, sceptical, or close- 
handed man ! The toil and money expended for the 
house and altar of God are not utterly lost and cast 
away on unproductive enterprise or an empty super- 
stition. The alabaster box that held the precious oint- 
ment, wrought by cunning Hebrew artificer as it 
might have been, was never so beautiful as when it 
was broken on the feet of Jesus ; and both art and 
religion, the two deepest energies of the human soul, 
conspire to defend the temple and the gold of the 
temple which they have together reared and wrought, 
as a befitting gift in token of man's fealty to the 
Author of his days. 

So let me continue my illustrations with some 
image of those cathedrals which make a principal at- 
traction of Europe. I shall not minutely describe 
any particular edifice ; but try, in a single resem- 
blance, if I can, to give an idea of the whole class. 
One of the surprises and delights abroad, to an 
ignorant or inexperienced traveller from the interior 
of our country, where the landscape is spotted with 
the white little meeting-houses of a Protestant and 

16* 



186 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

doctrinally divided population, must be some vast 
and ancient sanctuary, in solitary dignity, soaring 
from the centre of a town to the skies. Perhaps he 
learns, to the confounding of all his sharp calcula- 
tions at home, that a whole marble quarry has, by 
some rich nobleman, been bequeathed for its con- 
struction, and there stands, as in the Duomo at 
Milan, transformed into a huge, many-sided crystal, 
polished with manifold cuttings against the light of 
the sun. Elsewhere he may see the tall structure 
rising in stone, of a ruddy tinge, as though the cold, 
hard material blushed its graceful and delicate tribute 
to the Most High. Again the gray, primeval granite 
towers from the lowest bed of the earth, — the very 
heart of the globe ascending and refining its rude 
and rocky awkwardness into airy alcoves and columns, 
to signify its adoration. As you walk inside, you 
see the ample space garnished with pillars, the con- 
gregated shafts of a single one of which, looking 
like a sheaf of grain to the sight, may occupy as 
much room as sometimes, among us, does an entire 
hall of assembly. Mounting to the roof, you marvel 
at a carving of ornament, so extensive and multitu- 
dinous as to include more labor than the saw and 
hammer, in a new country, have done in rearing an 
entire village. The eye, lifting its glance higher up 
the turrets, or passing out along the projections from 
the eaves, notes thousands of statues, — so it is liter- 
ally at Milan, — hanging forth their finished sculp- 
ture in mid-heaven, over the sides and summits of 
one edifice which art has presented to religion, and 
religion to God. 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 187 

Look, with such imagination as these poor words 
may be able to awaken, at some masterpiece of this 
pious architecture. You will perceive intuitively 
that there is, in certain magnitudes and relations of 
parts, an intrinsic charm ; and it is by the perfect 
and faultless form of what you are gazing at that 
your attention is first won and entranced. That 
spire, shooting with its various openings and succes- 
sive diminutions far into the sky, through all its 
curves, in all its angles, and along the whole of 
its fine taper, has certainly the very gradations of 
a heavenly harmony, — a harmony which all the 
arts aspire after, — expressed, now in tones, now 
in colors, and now in forms, but ever the same 
heavenly harmony ; and the soul reaches the temple's 
top, as it were but to leap or fly into the upper habi- 
tation, leaving the body behind. That swelling 
dome in its shape rivals even the blue sky above it. 
Is it not the lofty arch itself, painted small by the 
sun, — itself in these days a painter, — that at once 
reveals both ? Those uncounted pinnacles, each with 
its wavy surface and line straight up, are as so many 
flames of fire fixed in and feeding upon the atmo- 
sphere which they penetrate with an unquenchable 
ardor from the human breast. What a picture, that 
will not let you go, but holds you with its immense 
glitter, enchants by its play of light and shade with 
the rolling sun and level earth, — these three to- 
gether, from morning to night, — draws you to point 
after point for a new observation, sends you off for a 
view more complete, and then pulls you back for one 



188 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

more distinct, till your body is tired out with the 
very fascination of your soul ! 

Not in a day or a year is such a work accom- 
plished ; but age after age the grand cathedral, 
uncompleted, is yet carried on, as though the heart 
of the world labored with it for ever. It grows 
from its roots in the faith of mankind. A tree 
longer in blooming than even the celebrated century 
plant in the garden, it opens into leaf after leaf its un- 
fading flower. In the long process of its perfection, 
it links together generations, and perhaps diverse 
peoples, and monarchs that have tended it, till it takes 
on itself the character of an offering to its Creator 
from the human race. The workman, that now 
walks with his mallet or graver on its sublime eaves, 
but follows upon the work of predecessors whose 
bones are long since resolved into the mould of their 
mother-earth; and upon his strokes will come the 
hands of others, at this task of time, after his bones 
shall have likewise crumbled. You pace over the 
steps, that are firm as the very ground, to every 
part of this princely crown of all buildings, which 
stretches with twofold direction, — back into the past, 
and forth into the future, — and you seem to be 
meeting, as on a common platform, with the sons 
and daughters of men, whose flowing lives mingle to 
make the tide of history. You feel that you are 
taking the adoring anthem from the lips of some, 
and sounding it on to the lips of others ; or, standing, 
as you grow still with meditation, you appear to be 
leaning on the staff of the Almighty, by the vene- 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 189 

rable banner of God that floats in the breezes of 
eternity. As from some point, like the tower at 
Strasburg, well-nigh level with the top of the grand 
pyramid in Egypt, your perpendicular gaze reaches 
the street, well indeed might you believe yourself 
removed from the stirring and tumultuous scenes of 
life, whose insect shapes glide in ghostly phantasms 
below, but the roar of whose ceaseless business can- 
not attain to your ear. Yet the great cathedral 
evidently belongs to this world, as well as to the 
world of spirits, to span and bridge over the inter- 
val, to earthly-minded men so impassable, between 
the two. It is the offspring of the human mind, 
and the nature of things ; it is the fineness and ex- 
tract of nature, the beautiful essence of this fair and 
orderly world, as though the great trunk of the 
globe had necessarily unfolded into blossom ; for, 
as you look, you are persuaded that the conception 
of it was inevitable, the first germination a thing of 
course, in the revering heart and fertile genius of 
man ; and that, the moment it was conceived, the 
execution was unavoidable no less, the result follow- 
ing upon the thought by a law, let me repeat not 
profanely, as when God said at the creation, "Let 
there be light, and there was light." 

But the worshipper in this wondrous ark for the. 
soul looks upon the superficial structure as but 
the shell and container of realities infinitely more 
dear. Within are the altar and holy place and blessed 
host and divine service, with song and prayer and 
sacrifice. Within are the chapels inscribed, by pa- 



190 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

tient art, with the marvellous and benign incidents 
of the Christian faith. Within are the niches filled 
with the vivid sculptures and delineations of holy- 
men and martyrs, from the apostles down, and the 
Captain of their salvation at the head of all. Within, 
along the aisles, by the low basement, or in sacred 
crypts underneath, — sometimes more spacious than 
our upper sanctuaries, — are the tombs of kings and 
heroes and saints. Within, the walls are hung with 
paintings representing whatever is most grand and 
touching in Christian annals, crowned by the birth 
and crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord. If 
one did not know the facts, it might appear like 
practising on his credulity to tell him, that churches, 
not alone in the great cities of the continent, but in 
the lesser towns, display an expenditure in canvas 
and statuary exceeding the bestowments upon most 
of the costlier temples in the capitals of our land. 
The spirit of religion is, indeed, not to be measured 
by the size and splendor of cathedrals ; but by many 
things beside, more important. But we cannot help 
regarding such a holy place as the hand of art 
brings, for one of the best of its doings, to the em- 
brace of piety, among the striking proofs that man 
was made to pay his devotions, through the chief of 
his accomplishments, to the first Builder of the 
world. If the other triumphs of art, for our con- 
venience or luxury, have in them an intent and 
profit, — these most of all. With no senseless de- 
sign has the temple been made to soar above the 
warehouse, making the summit of the city, adorned 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 191 

with beauty beyond the mill and factory, consecrated 
with insignia more precious than thos3 in the courts 
and offices of human law, and lined with aisles, in 
marble and costly wood, more richly wrought than 
the porches of houses and the paths of the hills. It 
is a true symbol that should rouse the sentiment to 
which it refers ; for if the blood thrills, and the 
nerves tingle, in admiration of what man has done 
on earth for his own improvement, shall not a signi- 
ficance be acknowledged in what he has done to 
show forth a direct loyalty to God ? Yea, there is 
meaning in this too. The spire does not point to a 
region towards which we may not travel. The dome 
does not emulate a heaven in which we may not 
dwell. The swelling roof, as it rings back the 
chanted hymn from its indescribably rich tracery 
of stone, — beside whose long stability the life of 
man passes like a shadow, — is itself but the dim 
figure and little reflection of a ceiling that echoes 
loftier anthems in everlasting duration. 

But I must proceed, though with some hesitancy 
and sense of unfitness, to make my perhaps rude 
copy of some of the testimonies to religion more 
finely recorded by the painter's pencil. The glories 
of religious architecture, which from the hand of 
genius have marked and figured the earth, are strik- 
ing proofs of the soul's faith. But perhaps we find 
witnesses more persuasive in an outward compass 
vastly inferior. Sometimes a picture, occupying but 
a few feet of canvas, being, mechanically considered, 
a mere colored surface, is charged with a power ex- 



192 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

celling that of the most massive constructions, out- 
shining all the widest grandeurs of human wealth 
and enterprise, and overflowing with an influence 
which surmounting belfry and steeple cannot convey 
to the soul. If any one ask whether this be all 
which the chief of the fine arts has to say, — simply 
to tell us what good and excellent things are Chris- 
tian faith, love, and piety, — I must answer, of course, 
that though this is not the only object or exercise or 
wonderful accomplishment of art, yet that moral 
beauty is its great inspiration. 

Instead of attempting, however, to elucidate this 
from any abstract account of the subjects chosen for 
the brush, let me try to introduce my readers into 
a continental gallery. The halls to which we are ac- 
customed afford, indeed, but little idea of the ample 
spaces, in magnificent structures, devoted in Europe 
to the reception and preservation of the treasures 
bestowed century after century by the hand of 
genius. It might consume an hour to compass the 
exterior of one of these edifices in your walk ; and 
the strength of a day would scarce suffice barely to 
pace along the walls and through all the windings of 
the interior, granting the hasty glance of a moment 
at each picture, — perhaps wholly overlooking count- 
less etchings, engravings, pieces of statuary, mould- 
ings and carvings in gold, silver, and ivory, the 
modellings of towns and ships, the memorials of 
national history, or relics of great personages, con- 
tained in the same vast building, the study of which 
would furnish occupation for years. For the picto- 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 193 

rial exhibition alone, you must glide quickly over 
the waxed floor, and let your eye run along the 
painted surface which has been traced by a thousand 
cunning fingers, and gloriously stained as with the 
life-blood of a thousand hearts. You are but one of a 
great multitude of gazers, who from all parts of the 
world, like pilgrims to a shrine, have flocked to such a 
splendid temple of art, open like a sanctuary, — the 
glories of art, like those of nature, being, abroad, com- 
monly free to all beholders without money and with- 
out price ; though no calculator could easily estimate 
the immense cost of what is thus so freely displayed. 
Accumulations of ages, contributions of nations, gra- 
tuities of kings and princes, offerings by a more than 
royal power to outlive many dynasties, with additions 
of modern treasure to ancient stores, — these col- 
lections of generations, to whose long march our 
national existence is like infancy to threescore and 
ten, are all placed in order as for an everlasting 
show, which revolutions and governmental changes 
respect, though blood runs through the streets ; 
while the river of life, of which you make but a 
drop, flows on through the suite of spacious rooms, 
as in one of its permanent channels, and quiets its 
waves, and cleanses its current with the beauty, as it 
flows. Well indeed is it when the character of 
purity is given to the enjoyment of a people ; well 
when the seekers of pleasure can be won to such 
delights ; well when we shall have them in our 
country to offer. 

But what are the figures that thus rapid and ghost- 
17 



194 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

like pass by you as you move, or from which you 
select here and there one to contemplate with espe- 
cial regard ? Truly, they are very various. They 
are not all serious themes, not all texts for a sermon, 
not all celebrations of love and prayer and virtue, 
and whatever is best and holiest in the human heart. 
They are, of course, representations of human life 
and action, in every great direction in which the 
human soul goes forth. So be it ! Religion is not 
the only interest of man. It would be partial and 
false to say so. There are other things in the world 
deserving attention beside even the sublimities of 
spiritual affection and worship. They are legiti- 
mately in the world, as God meant they should be ; 
and therefore legitimately represented in art. But 
it is worthy of note, that the purely base and wicked 
things in the world, which God abhors, are seldom 
or never chosen by art for its topics. They are as 
unfit to be reproduced as they are ever to exist. 
Art, therefore, in her plans and labors, is essentially 
pure and lofty. One can hardly be in her palaces 
without a feeling of sanctity. As you survey the 
masterpieces, arranged in her apartments for the as- 
tonishment, delight, and instruction of mankind, 
though you will often see the evil and the good in 
conflict, you will rarely find any thing merely cor- 
rupt or offensive in its effects. Looking at good 
pictures is, accordingly, an informing and elevating 
study for the soul. Study, I call it ; for, delightful as 
is the spectacle, that it truly exercises the mind 
and soul is evident to any one who will observe that 
by nothing is he sooner fatigued. 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 195 

As everybody is more or less conversant with 
pictures, — scarce a room we enter being so mean as 
not to have something more than the bare work of 
the saw and the hammer, some engraving at least 
suspended, — as all read a little in the great volume 
of art, let us be glad that they read a refined and 
wholesome language. The picture-language, which, 
in rude and savage periods, is used before this won- 
derful instrument of arbitrary characters has been 
well formed, — consisting of coarse drawings of 
the several objects and positions to be indicated, — 
may be considered as reaching its perfection in the 
magnificence of form and coloring that constitutes 
the very wainscot, and crowds up into the ceiling of 
these marvellous courts, through which you are tak- 
ing your journey. Truly, the picture-language has, 
in some respects, the advantage over that constructed 
into books out of the grammar of conventional signs, 
especially a moral advantage ; for, while many of the 
volumes from the press are essentially filthy, clean as 
they may look to the eye, — and many of its diurnal 
sheets are false in fact, — plausibly as their story 
may be told, Art very seldom is so shameless as to 
choose pollution for the subject she shall hold forth, 
and commonly, in her most brilliant hues, tells the 
truth. 

In that finer world of art, then, which, like one 
globe you may have seen curiously wrought under 
another, has been fashioned within this comparatively 
coarse, outer world of matter, what are the scenes 
presented ? In the very heart of a great metropolis, 



196 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

escaped from the roar of the pavement and the dust 
of the street, — treading in this charmed circle of 
the halls of art, — you shall, perhaps, suddenly light 
upon some sweet landscape, with the green grass and 
.purling brooks and waving trees and sunlit hills, — 
found, as it were, in a moment's search, without any 
long excursion, — as though the citizen had his 
holy revenge for being shut up and excluded from 
the sight of nature amid tiers of brick and stone, in 
this present of a speaking likeness of Nature herself, 
made lively by touches of imagination out of the 
finest recollections of the artist, and clothed with a 
charm beyond the ordinary situations that could be 
commanded on the face of the earth itself. What a 
device and discovery of enjoyment and improve- 
ment ! The rain may pour, the snow may fall, or 
the tempest blow without ; but, within, you are en- 
tranced with visions of light, serenity, and verdure, 
that bring back pleasant spots in your actual pilgrim- 
age, remind you of other days, or transport you, as 
by the waving of a wand, to the place where you 
were born. The din and drive of human traffic and 
toil go on a few rods from where you stand ; but 
your soul is surrounded and absorbed, as in a mirror, 
by the fair and peaceful works of God, which, unlike 
human inventors and makers, he has forbidden no- 
body to copy. You take one step, and this magic 
theatre of art, in which you are, reveals, beside the 
attractions of the material globe, the figures of ani- 
mated life, — it may be the kine feeding over the 
meadow, the bheep in the pasture, the birds in the 
trees and the air. 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 197 

One motion more, and the noble form of humanity 
is disclosed, with its blessed boon of life from the 
great Creator. Children play before some rustic cot- 
tage ; peasants partake of good cheer at their well- 
spread board ; household friends converse or sing in 
the lighted chamber ; men and maidens, in harm- 
less glee, dance to the sound of the pipe on some 
level lawn ; the grass falls before the mower's ring- 
ing scythe, or the reapers bind, with bustling sound, 
the yellow sheaves ; the mill bestrides the rushing 
stream, and you almost hear the whir of its wheels 
mingle with the dash of the broken tide ; the vessel 
hoists her broad sails, though no actual wharf or 
port is near by, or plunges amid the angry billows of 
the middle deep, — so artful in depicting are these 
superficial and motionless colors, — or furls her 
wings to sleep in the shelter of some still lagoon. 
Another turn : the buildings and natural appear- 
ances of other climes are unveiled, and, in fancy, at 
once you are among them, — the wigwams of the 
Indian, the altars of sacrifice in Mexico, the snow- 
houses of arctic regions, the cane huts of tropic 
islands, the gondolas gliding on Venetian canals, 
and tower and palace shining forth from the level 
squares ; till, in this wizard carriage of art, moving 
your own feet but a very little, you travel, as though 
a strange velocipede bore you, round the world. 
But, in a moment, you may stop, and see others 
moving ; for, at the lifting of your eye, the strange 
panorama unfolds new shapes, — homes of love left, 
seats of industry forsaken, quiet fields trembling at 

17* 



198 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

the tread of approaching hosts, and the clear sky 
blackened with the thunder-storm of battle. But, 
thank God ! tempests, however big and fierce, cannot 
rage for ever, nor the heart of man, more than the 
heavens, be perpetually convulsed. So Peace ad- 
vances on the terrible dark, and silences discords 
with her voice; while the heroes, that fought for 
their country, their kindred, or their faith, come in 
triumph, with crowns and plaudits, at which the 
very air seems to shine and shake around you, for 
their courageous deeds. 

But what portraits are these which Art — unques- 
tionable mistress of all this multifarious arrangement 
and pompous ceremony of human life — has taken 
pains to put above the rest, to set as diamonds at the 
top of her riches, and wear for her chosen ornament 
and pride ? They are wrought from her loftiest 
inspiration, and with her most patient handling, as 
though she would embody in them an idea and effort 
corresponding to their intrinsic worth and superiority. 
What are they ? They are the images of religion ; 
they are the New Testament turned into colors, and 
become again a more gloriously illuminated manu- 
script than, in old time, it ever was before. Not 
an incident, from beginning to end, of the marvel- 
lous narrative, that can be made picturesque, is 
omitted from the designs of the palette. Among 
all the versions so famous of the Bible into different 
tongues of the nations, is this translation into the 
one universal language of mankind. Particularly 
the career of Jesus Christ is thus represented in 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 199 

hues and forms that speak with moving eloquence 
to every soul. "Whether you can understand French 
and German and Italian, or not, you can understand 
this sublime speech of the canvas in France and 
Italy and Germany ; and no jargon or confusion of 
vocal sounds beneath can at all drown its accents or 
mar its meaning. Art becomes another, yea, a fifth, 
evangelist before you, proclaiming with her mute 
but mighty trumpet, like that she paints in the 
mouth of angels, the eternal lessons of truth and 
duty. Other matters have been but her practice and 
preparation, her first note and prelude to this music 
of her heart, which she plays with all her fervor and 
utmost skill. " Songs without words " is the title 
given to some of the musical compositions of a great 
master. And here are discourses and conversations 
and parables, the holiest ever uttered, without words 
or accents. The New Testament not inspired, when 
it has such over-measure of inspiration in it as to 
inspire afresh to the noblest achievements of art ! 
What value and variety of instruction ! The publi- 
can leaves his table to look after a nobler revenue ; 
and the fishers their nets, to be fishers of men ; the 
disciples gather to their Master's feet, beneath whose 
lips the air is calm as noontide ; the good Samaritan 
addresses you in his act of mercy by the wayside, 
and you do not weary of his short and pathetic dis- 
course ; the prodigal returns to his father's arms, 
and you almost hear upon the strings — for we listen 
to pictures as well as look at them — the tune that 
gives the time to those flying feet ; the wise virgins 



£00 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

bear aloft their steady-flaming lamps, and the dim, 
expiring wicks of the foolish ones drop and die out 
upon the floor ; and every character, good or bad, 
holds forth example or warning in hues glorious or 
gloomy, from this second gospel, into which the little 
wonder-working pencil, wielded by human fingers, 
has converted the first. "What is Art, then, and what 
would she say ? Is that your query ? For what is 
she here, and what is her mission in the world ? 
Verily, Art is nothing less than a preacher, the most 
penetrating and convincing in all the company of 
those that preach, — their welcome sister ; and her 
sermon of religion, for the inward ear of a countless 
multitude, is to declare it, not the only thing, but 
yet supreme of all the interests and pursuits of man. 
Other things she patronizes and condescends to 
favor : this she chooses for her distinction and 
crown, — the privilege and end of her being. She 
would seem to have assembled all the decent do- 
ings of men in her reflecting glass, for the sake of 
maintaining the breathing love and truth of heaven 
at their head. As the commencing proportions of 
the structure are reared but for the grand concluding 
capital that glitters in the air, and as the procession 
exists for the leadership of the king, so she sum- 
mons all lesser things and lower dignitaries together 
for the sake of a comparison, to affirm of the soul's 
pious, absolute devotion to the Almighty, — this 
is " the chiefest among ten thousand, — altogether 
lovely." 

So the one figure most beautiful and sublime in 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 201 

art, is the one figure most beautiful and sublime 
in human life on the face of the earth, — beyond 
the ancient front of Jove or the bright brow of 
Apollo, — the figure of Jesus Christ. In every situa- 
tion, — a babe in his mother's arms, a boy in the 
temple among the doctors, healing the sick, raising 
the dead, or himself rising, transfigured, crucified, 
glorified ; his life, his passion, his ascension, — every 
thing about him is seized by Art for her best en- 
deavors, and often finest success. 

So I felt, especially before one delineation of the 
holy mother and her child Jesus, which makes the 
pride and glory of the German city of Dresden, 
and, like the other great pictures in their several 
places, is set there so that it cannot be removed, — if 
I should not rather say, it is the honor of Europe 
and the world. The spectator feels, at first, a little 
curious and puzzled to account for its effects ; for 
this astonishing picture does not seem to have been 
elaborated with the patient pencil that has wrought 
so unwearied upon many other famous subjects, but 
rather to have been thrown off, almost as though it 
had been in water-colors, by an inspiration of divine 
genius, in a sudden jubilee of its solemn exercise, 
with a motion of the hand, at the last height and 
acme of its attainment. The theme of the Saviour 
of the world, a babe on his parent's bosom, is of 
interest not to be surpassed. The dim shine of a 
cloud of angels flows from behind a curtain into the 
room, which is equally open to earth or heaven. 
All heaven indeed, through the artist's wondrous 



202 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

hinting of innumerable eager faces, seems crowding 
there to see. " These things the angels desire to look 
into." All earth waits dumbly expectant and mys- 
teriously attentive below. The mother is discovered 
standing upon the globe with her offspring in her 
arms. The pope, anticipated impersonation of the 
highest human authority, bends his knees with the 
half-bald, half-hoary head, sending from his lowly 
posture only an upward, revering glance, while he 
lays his mitre on the ground, and, as well he may, 
there lets it lie. A saint stands at the other side, 
looking down with the humility of a heavenly coun- 
tenance, yet evidently taking in, with admiring con- 
templation, the import of the whole scene. Little 
cherubs from below return their silent, loving gaze 
to the vision that drops downcast from above. But 
it is remarkable that the least and youngest figure in 
this company — regard it from what side you will 
— is at the head, and in command of the whole. 
The graybeard of ecclesiastic might, at whose wav- 
ing thrones were to shake and kingdoms be re- 
arranged, is annihilated before that soft, childish face. 
The sanctified and mature spirit, that had flown in- 
calculable distances from its upper seat, wears the 
veil of modesty, and bends into the stoop of wor- 
ship, before that earthly life just begun. The angels 
that sang with the morning stars together over the 
foundations of the world, flock and crowd, as to a 
sight unequalled even by their old experience, in 
the ante-chamber, about the door, of their rightful 
Sovereign, shaped as infancy that cannot yet walk ; 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 203 

while the winged seraphs, of age apparently little su- 
perior to itself, that have descended from the sky, fall 
yet farther down beneath the floor, and cling by their 
beautiful arms to the edge, as, with their sight, they 
seek from afar their clay-clad companion, yet some- 
how Lord. The mother herself, that bore what she 
holds upon her breast, has a countenance, in which 
strange submissiveness mingles with paternal care, 
and tenderness runs into forethought of future days. 
The child, as though in him a thousand lines con- 
verged, is the centre and unity of the piece ; yet 
without ceasing at all to be a child, in the utmost 
extent that simplicity and innocence can reach. But, 
at the same time, there is in his look a majesty pecu- 
liar and unrivalled, which seems to justify and re- 
quire all this angelic and terrestial deference. In 
those delicate orbs, — shall I ever forget them ? — 
turned full out upon the world, and gentle and un- 
pretending, too, as eyeballs sheathed in flesh ever 
were or could be, there is, in what manner I know 
not, by what art or inspiration painted I surely can- 
not tell, a supremacy of control which principalities 
above or below might well fear to disobey, as though 
that were the final authority of the universe. 

Never before by any like production had I been 
quite abashed and overcome. I could except to, and 
study and compare, other pictures : this passed my 
understanding. Long did I inspect, and often did I 
go back to re-examine, this mystery, which so foiled 
my criticism, and constrained my wonder, and con- 
vinced me, as nothing visible beside had ever done, 



204 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

that, if no picture is to be worshipped, something is 
to be worshipped ; that is to be worshipped which 
such a picture indicates or portrays. But the problem 
was too much for my solving. I can only say, it 
mixed for me the transport of wonder with the ecstasy 
of delight ; it affected me like the sign of miracle ; it 
was the supernatural put into color and form ; for 
certainly no one, who received the suggestion of those 
features, the sense of those meek, subduing eyes, 
could doubt any longer, if he had ever once doubted, 
of there being a God, a heaven, and, both before and 
beyond the sepulchre, an immortal life. No one, 
who caught that supernal expression of the whole 
countenance, could believe it was made of matter, 
born of mortality, had its first beginning in the cra- 
dle, or could be laid away in the grave, but rather 
that it was of a quite dateless and everlasting tenure. 
I would be free even to declare, that, in the light 
which played between those lips and lids, was 
Christianity itself, — Christianity in miniature for the 
smallness of the space I might incline to express it, 
but that I should query in what larger presentment I 
had ever beheld Christianity so great. Mont Blanc 
may fall out of the memory, and the Pass of the 
Stelvio fade away; but the argument for religion, — 
argument I call it, — which was offered to my mind 
in the great Madonna of Raphael, cannot fail. 

It will be understood that I have singled this out 
from a multitude of pictures, presenting this one 
subject, of the childhood of Jesus, which seems to 
have been with painters a favorite theme. I have no 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 205 

space to describe others, — not even the celebrated 
notte, or night, of Correggio, which, in the same 
gallery, hangs near by ; or any of the sitting Ma- 
donnas so commonly engraved. To give the frank 
judgment, perhaps, of my ignorance, no other paint- 
ing of the same scene possessed me in the same way. 
I could see that all the rest were paintings : I well- 
nigh forgot that this was not reality. I could talk of 
the rest in measured sentences ; but of this only in 
exclamations, or in ejaculations and sighs heard but 
in heaven. There is, in every mode of human 
accomplishment, a great, an infinite, difference be- 
tween that which fully expresses your idea and 
answers to your yearning, and that which falls, 
however slightly, short of it. This difference I 
repeatedly felt in pictures, and in none more than 
in those portraying the image of Jesus Christ. 

As I have tried to put into words some faint copy 
of the beginning of his course, as delineated in one 
of the Madonnas of Raphael, let me attempt likewise 
to transfer the general effect of its close, as drawn 
in the Descent from the Cross, the masterpiece of 
Rubens, which, more even than the noble cathedral 
in which it hangs, gives a heavenly honor to the city 
of Antwerp. 

In strong contrast, indeed, does the latter picture 
stand with the former, which, in the opinion of some, 
it rivals in merit. The first of the pictures looks 
forward, the last looks back ; one is prophecy, the 
other history ; one happy innocence, the other hard 
experience; one the flushing spring-time, and the 

18 



206 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

other the melancholy fall. Is this rude hill- side, 
with these implements of cruelty that have now- 
done their work, the last scene of what began in 
apartments of love and joy, with such signals from 
above and below of hope and success ? Is this life- 
less form, sinking here in gory shame, the same that 
we saw borne aloft on the supreme earthly throne of 
a mother's bosom, only grown from childhood to 
manhood ? Are these the sinews of that softness ? 
Where, oh where, is that solemn jubilee of promise 
and power, foretold of yore as ending the long track 
of Hebrew prophetic light, for meeting heaven and 
earth to see ? What gloom is this which has 
gathered over the splendors of the scene, and what 
ignominy clouds its transcending majesty ? Whither 
have the angels fled, — they that bent their eager 
faces to the vision of lovely innocence embodying 
divine authority ? And, for the symbols of strength 
and unparalleled triumph that graced the advent of 
the incarnate spirit of God, is it possible that the 
painter can now not even hint the presence of any 
celestial aid, but only be allowed to celebrate the 
victory complete of earthly foes, and point to the 
dim withdrawal, with exulted shout, into the back- 
ground, of engines of torture and emblems of dis- 
grace? What change in the human accessories in 
the foreground ! Instead of a parent holding with 
reverence what, but for the sacred claims of flesh and 
blood, she counts herself scarce worthy to touch ; 
instead of the man of supreme power, with bowing 
head and bending knee, casting down his titles of com- 



TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 207 

mand to the ground ; instead of these, compassionate 
looks fastened on the same — yet how altered ! — ob- 
ject once of admiration and lowly pride ; and pitiful 
arms outstretched to loosen a dead corpse from the 
wounding spikes, and let it gently slide to the 
earth; these palms that wrought miracles, these 
feet that walked the sea, themselves carried as a 
dead weight ; while, with tears and sobs and wring- 
ing hands, woman's friendship, purest of earthly 
things, and then proving itself so, waits below to 
see done the pious office it doubts if nature's force 
will enable itself in such grievous anguish to 
perform. Oh sad abandonment and extreme reverse ! 
Not strange is it that the aspect of such a picture 
should fix even to illusion the sympathies of the 
beholder ; so that one who had visited it, being after 
a while desired by his companion to depart, replied, 
as in a dream, " Stop till they get him down ! " 

Not, however, the living shapes, but the inani- 
mate figure, of Jesus, as in the first painting, is still 
the centre and attraction of the piece. Impotent 
itself, it is omnipotent over your sympathies. Help- 
lessly swaying from side to side it seems, as you 
look on the rough, bloody tree ; yet it lifts, and 
unawares gradually draws up, your own arms, which 
you cannot keep still, as if they would fain support 
it. The white linen sheet, which tender respect is 
spreading underneath, makes, with the deadly pale 
corse it is receiving, the light of the picture ; all 
else becoming visible from this sepulchral tint of 
agony that finishes in death. Yet, after all, it is 



208 TESTIMONY OF ART TO RELIGION. 

not suffering, or the last mortal sleep, that princi- 
pally engages your attention. Spite of the cold, 
pallid sweat, with which lingering torment has at 
length given place to dissolution, the main expres- 
sion of the countenance is not of agony or death. 
It is not because these are feebly portrayed. Never, 
indeed, was agony or death touched with such mas- 
terly force. Ah ! what a tale of struggle and exhaus- 
tion, of strength utterly gone, and spirits fainting 
away, so that the nerves will twinge, and the chill 
shudder run through your own shrinking frame, as 
you look ! Nevertheless, in the features is signifi- 
cance stronger than agony, and deeper than death 
itself. Yes, you see it ! you see it ! The final 
quiver on those lips was not of pain, but prayer. 
The last breath, distending those thin nostrils, was 
not despair, but resignation. In that delicate mouth, 
that almost feminine cheek, was no prevailing sen- 
sation of reluctance or disgust, but welcome for the 
doom ; and the dropping of that head was not from 
overmastering weakness, but towards a Father's 
bosom ; while out of the glazing eyes, through well- 
nigh sealed lids, falls and falls a light as of the set- 
ting sun of existence, telling it shall rise in glory 
out of this dread eclipse. He cannot, must not, 
expire for ever so. In the soul, a spirit from God, 
as we look, seems to declare it. A gospel of nature 
in the heart responds to the gospel of grace, that he 
must not expire for ever so. A true and conscious 
prophet in man's bosom repeats the prediction which 
the great Prophet of earth and heaven gave of his 
resurrection. 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 209 

Ah ! precious burden ! — precious for you who 
have climbed the fatal tree to bear the spent body to 
its rest ! You are upholding that which shall uphold 
you. In the hours of your weakness and decline, 
when thick on your brow shall be the damps that 
prefigure those of the tomb, when heavy on your 
soul shall lie the sin which Christ came by his spirit 
of love and self-sacrifice to rebuke and take away, 
the dying of the Lord, at which you ministered, yea, 
rather his life, his spiritual, unquenched, unquench- 
able life, in death and out of if, shall be the token to 
you of mercy from God and immortality. Mother 
of the Son of God, at the foot of his cross, dry 
your tears ; for this dishonor of your spotless child 
shall but prove his perfect glory. Penitent Mary, 
who knowest not now, for all thy life, what to do for 
him that did so much for thee, thine eyes shall see 
another sight near to Calvary. Erring son or 
daughter of the frail one from whom we are de- 
scended all, if thou beholdest in a woman the source 
of our sin, behold, too, in the offspring of a woman, 
the means of our salvation ! 



There are worshippers of nature, and worshippers 
of art. There are those who seem to regard the 
creation as corrupted by all mixture with it of man's 
activity ; and there are those who, in a wild, uncul- 
tured scene, of however delicate and romantic 

18* 



210 BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 

beauty, soon feel desolate and lonely, and must 
resort to some busy motion of their own will, that 
they may be content, — even if it be no more than 
playing a game or using a knife. There are those 
who are at home amid the career of the elements, of 
the winds and streams and tides ; and there are 
those who, like Samuel Johnson, love better to be 
in continual neighborhood with the tide of human 
life, that runs, with its everlasting roar and mighty 
stimulus, through the streets of cities. Some are so 
superstitiously fond of the rude universe, that it is 
an unpardonable offence to their eye if the hand of 
art has altered in the least its features, to smooth the 
knoll, or, with gate or dam, to swell the waterfall ; 
and some think the designs of the Maker in his 
works can not only be perceived, but even assisted, 
carried out and fulfilled, by his children ; nay, that 
he left on purpose something of this for them to do. 
But a religious soul must count all worship of 
either art or nature a false worship, and all resting 
in art or nature as stopping mid-way on the ladder 
from earth to heaven. Accordingly, it will exult 
with perfect satisfaction, and enjoy the ecstasy of 
divine peace, only in those scenes or achievements 
through which shines bright and pure the glory of 
God. And if this be most conspicuously manifest 
in a picture, — if a piece of canvas, that might hang 
inside a cottage, or a scene, such as a great genius, 
unknown, visiting a convent, painted for a monk on 
a napkin, express the eternal splendor better than 
any material feature of the world, — such a soul 



BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 211 

will not hesitate to prefer and set it above the sun 
and the sea and all the sparkling host of heaven. 
Mere magnitude is not the great container of power 
or condition of effect. There are galleries in Europe 
which are more to me than its mountains, and 
which I believe the first Parent, fondly surveying 
the labors of his inspired and adoring offspring, 
prizes as more to his external honor than the 
Pyrenees or the Alps. Let us thank him for the 
testimony of art to religion, to himself; let us see, 
in the lines and hues its hand has drawn and laid, 
only the first sketches of subjects that shall occupy 
the attention of another existence ; let us esteem 
every attempt of genius as failing of its true aim, 
unless it lead us now, beyond delight and admira- 
tion, to a nobler life. 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 



Through haughty realms that low and wasted lie, 
Through royal ranks that march in haste to die, 
An empire, with no touch of earthly fate, 
Grows on to boundless reach and endless date. 
No gilded throne its lowly founder rears ; 
No sword or sceptre stretches for our fears; 
His purple robe, the crimson on his head, 
Tells of no hearts he bruised, no blood he shed : 
Glories of his insignia kings affright, 
And crowns are turned to relics at his sight. 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 



We all have a general idea of what a kingdom is, — 
that it is a certain regular authority of will or law 
built up on the face of the earth, including a par- 
ticular space and population, and enduring through 
a greater or lesser period of time. This general idea 
will break itself into distinct and vivid meanings to 
the mind of a traveller, as, leaving his own home, 
he visits successively the different nations that oc- 
cupy the globe. The peculiar symbol chosen in one 
or another of them to designate its power, — the 
lion or eagle or double-headed eagle, wkh a score of 
devices beside, — will salute you from a flag on the 
ship or the fort ; or it will be stamped in a seal, or em- 
blazoned on a document, or glisten in a picture, or 
shine from a coat of arms. The civil power will, at 
every frontier and in many interior towns, inquire into 
your right to pass from one country to another ; and, 
if you have not an orderly passport, with the latest 
authority, from the last office in some, perhaps, little 
village, to travel, it will turn you back from the 



216 THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

boundary line, though that may be a snowy moun- 
tain-top which it has cost a day's labor to climb. 
Then the officers of the customs will make you 
aware of the new control, to which at any point 
you have become subject, by searching for whatever 
they suspect you to carry unlawfully, in the shape of 
goods, over the borders of the state you may be 
entering ; till, from port to port, on river or sea, 
from boundary to boundary, and from city to city, of 
great empires or petty principalities, you will per- 
haps, in a long journey, have to encounter fifty ex- 
aminations, and get a realizing sense of what a 
kingdom is as you pass through its metropolitan 
fortified gate, or cross and re-cross its provincial 
line. A new language or peculiar dialect will in- 
form you of the same thing in a more intellectual 
way. Characteristic customs, local legislation, spe- 
cial privileges of particular persons, a diverse cast of 
features in the people, or some special shade on the 
countenance of the despotic or constitutional sway, 
will be additional remarks of verification. 

But, if you go deeper than the surface, you will 
see that every one of these kingdoms has the mark 
of time upon it. It is older or younger, begun at a 
specified era in the history of man, and is doomed to 
fall, or have its reigning family displaced, by another 
dynasty, at some point probably not far off in the 
future, — successful revolutions going on even in 
the most passive and unenterprising races, such as 
the Indian and Chinese. It is needless to speak 
of the houses that have, with bloody hands, expelled 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 217 

each other by turns all through Europe. In France, 
one may carry a half-dozen governments in his 
pocket, in the different coins of the empire or re- 
public, as it may chance to have been, — the image 
and superscription on the pieces of money being by 
no means all of one Csesar or tribe of Caesars ; but 
liberty, equality, and fraternity, contending with 
Bourbons and Bonapartes in your purse, in the 
jingle of gold that has succeeded to the clash of 
deadly swords and guns. 

The same thing may be seen in the contradictory 
monuments, especially in Paris, — that most beauti- 
ful and brilliant city in the world, which, it has been 
said, is France, — monuments reared, not far from 
each other, to the heroes and mobs and princes that 
have alternately had their hour upon the stage. 
For all that is apparently requisite to the name and 
superficial show of glory is that one shall have 
played some part, it does not much matter what, in 
the great national theatre, — to conquer the people, 
or conquer for them ; to be brave at home, or success- 
ful abroad ; even to build, or procure to be built, an 
arch or portal; to set up an Egyptian column, or 
pull down a Bastille ; to construct a glorious palace, 
or, in a riot, turn the cannon against its doors. The 
duration of kingdoms ! It is only necessary to in- 
spect the map of the continent, as it has been drawn 
and colored age after age, to see how short-lived 
have been its royalties and reigns ; how their re- 
spective limits have wavered to and fro, or been 
confounded together, making at last a perfect laby- 

19 



218 THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

rinth ; how their ancient marks have been obliterated, 
their whole regions ruthlessly partitioned, their very 
names changed, or the stock of emperors and nobles, 
that counted on perpetuity, cut off and driven out 
for ever. Go down into the crypts of the churches, 
in Westminster Abbey, in St. Denis, or at Vienna, 
at Basle, Milan, and every great town and historic 
centre, and, by the dim, struggling light of day, or 
under the sexton's flaring taper, try to read the in- 
scriptions, or make out the regal insignia in marble 
or bronze, of those once splendid in place and do- 
minion ; or walk through the long-deserted palaces, 
whose rooms are now kept by showmen for gainful 
curiosities, — which were no mere curiosities once ; 
survey the portraits of faces, whose frown was once 
destruction, but which are now so forgotten, that 
no decision is possible of the authenticity of the 
painter's delineations ; look at the beds where they 
slept, the ceilings where their diadems and heraldic 
honors are still sculptured, the tables where they 
abdicated, the doorways through which they fled, or 
the secret passages where they fell under the assas- 
sin's knife ; stand by the spot of execution in the 
open square where they poured out their life a sa- 
crifice to their foes ; or pause and wonder, as I did in 
the prison chapel of Marie Antoinette, in the dun- 
geons where may still be seen the little gloomy 
oratories of their prayer, and the rude crucifixes 
they adored with almost their expiring breath ; and 
then, if it be your question how long it is the fate of 
human glory and empire to last, acknowledge it is 






THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 219 

but a short story that is to be told of the kingship 
and nobility of this world, a tale like that a hundred 
times related, scarce more briefly in Holy Writ than 
often in earthly annals : " So Ahab slept with his 
fathers ; and Ahaziah, his son, reigned in his 
stead." 

All this, however, only renders more striking the 
presumption, in regard to any particular kingdom, 
that it will endure for ever. It has not seldom hap- 
pened to some brave and politic adventurer to esta- 
blish or usurp a kingdom, which he could leave to 
his children after he had occupied it for the little 
while a man may have to live. But there is one 
kingdom not abandoned to other hands, but in which 
its Founder reigns personally, with no decease. So 
it was predicted he should ; and it is, at least, an 
interesting question how this bold challenge has 
been maintained. It certainly was not maintained in 
any magnificent seeming of political power. Jesus 
Christ never ascended any throne, never wielded any 
visible sceptre, never led forth any army with ban- 
ners ; and, as he had a mortal body, he died as other 
mortals do. "What, then, is the nature, or where is 
the evidence, of his endless reign ? Feeling incom- 
petent adequately to describe the influence or to 
exhaust the argument, I can only touch on the sub- 
stantial proofs, open to the observation of a pilgrim 
through many climes, of this unparalleled sway, 
running over the demarcations of earthly powers, 
gaining a foothold at once within the separate limits 
of angry rivals, transcending the chronology of all 



220 THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

their noisy competitions, still warm and alive when 
their hates and loves came to be equally cold in the 
tomb, and without a signal yet discernible of termi- 
nation or decline. 

If any one will query whether this spread and 
hold of authority from an invisible Being is properly 
to be called a kingdom or reign, I will ask, in reply, 
Wherein does kingship consist, but in the giving 
of orders which are received and obeyed, whether 
the king be seen or not, as in the East he seldom 
was, reserving himself in state, and in the modern 
"West often is not, though every carriage stops in 
the street, and every moving thing gives token of 
obeisance, when he or any one of his family passes 
along ? No : this alters not the case. The absence 
of the king may make his power more wonderful, 
but not less real. 

In many empires you may be permitted to visit 
the old regalia, — now guarded in towers, and per- 
haps, for security of their immense value, both 
pecuniary and symbolic, kept under iron cages, — 
which have passed from head to head, not without 
stains of blood. No such symbols, indeed, did Je- 
sus wear or transmit. Among the other pretended 
relics of him, no regalia are shown. His was no 
crown but the thorny one, no purple but the mock 
purple, no scarlet but his own blood, no emblems 
but cross and cord and reed and nails. But whose 
orders have been circulated and respected like his ? 
What king has commanded so many subjects, and 
been in command so long ? Of whom else, since 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 221 

the world began, could it be said, without instanta- 
neous laughter and ridicule, that he should reign 
for ever ? The outward insignia — though they be 
of gold and diamond and sapphire and pearl ; though 
countless multitudes of visitors crowd to gaze at 
them ; and though their cost, in some cases, mounts 
to millions — are but the cold blaze and mere para- 
phernalia, perhaps the cast-off clothes, the corpse- 
like remains, of royalty. The royalty itself is in 
the control exercised over men's minds, over their 
thoughts and purposes, their affections and actions ; 
and, to make out our point, suffice it to observe, that 
this, in the will and precepts of Jesus Christ, is 
wider, deeper, and longer than from any man that 
ever breathed. 

I saw in "Warwick, an interior town in England, a 
stone church, that seemed, as I approached it, to be 
part and parcel of the primeval granite of the globe, 
which there pushed forth into a huge bole for its 
natural foundation. The walls seemed to have 
chosen for themselves this firm basis, running down 
to the very centre, so smoothly did they spring and 
rise out of their bed, as though tier had laid itself 
on tier, even as the strata below grew and magnified 
themselves from the pressure of the fundamental 
fires. The tower ascended and hung out its beauty 
in the air, as if it were the blossom of this solid 
crystalline root ; and the whole structure, as I re- 
turned to gaze upon it again and again, moved me, 
as itself a signal, none too strong, of the deep-laid 
and durable religion, the righteous and everlasting 
19* 



222 THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

princedom of Christ, which was proclaimed from the 
belfry, and preached and sung beneath its echoing 
roof. 

There can be no extravagance in illustrations of 
the durableness of Christ's kingdom. In the old 
Italian city of Aosta, in which the signs of modern 
industry are strangely mixed with the yet stand- 
ing tokens of former flourishing, I beheld a half- 
destroyed arch and a broken amphitheatre, said to 
have been erected before Christianity was known. 
One of these might have been built for the amuse- 
ment of the Romans in the intervals when that war- 
like people were tired of battle ; and the other pur- 
ported to have been raised by Augustus himself, to 
commemorate his victory over the Salassi, — a bar- 
barous tribe. But they were both crumbling away. 
The inscriptions, though cut deep by the chisel, 
seconding the triumphs of the sword, were fading so 
as to be scarcely in part legible. Benches and pillars 
and capitals and corner-stones were gone. Recent 
edifices pressed intrusively around, as if to crowd, 
as they very nearly had done, the ancient and venera- 
ble structures out of existence. What a spectacle 
and record of the ephemeral character of human 
accomplishments! Of that first splendor, beneath 
which armies, flushed with success and reeking with 
gore, their brazen shields casting back the sun and 
their flaunting ensigns aloft dallying with the air, 
undoubting of new triumphs, rolled on their way, 
— of it all, only a fragment, a cipher, was left. Of 
that pleasure which crowds had gathered to the play 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 223 

to share, where the stirring game may have been 
performed, the trial of strength or speed decided, or 
scenes from real life in theatric pomp enacted, — 
while Music lent her strains, that were only by the 
more vehement shouts of applause or cheers to 
new efforts interrupted, — nothing at all could be 
any longer seen or heard. 

These constructions, — the honor and praise of 
some famous unremembered architect, their ruins 
now held together for a little while longer by dint 
of props and plaster, that I and a few others still 
might see them, kept for show and pride, — ah ! 
melancholy ostentation of the pride of man ! — they 
were put up before the time of Christ. But how 
his time has lasted green and fresh beyond the date 
of their power or feeblest relation to the interests 
and pursuits of mankind ! They are obsolete but 
for the inquisitiveness of the antiquary and the 
lessons and quotations of the historian. Augustus 
is but a name, and the savage horde he expelled 
but a dim tradition, — hanging, like gossamer or a 
thread caught upon a branch above a pit, over the 
gulf of oblivion. But the life of Christ, the go- 
vernment which the old prophet said should be upon 
his shoulders, feeds on the centuries that waste all 
things beside, waxes with the ages, and requires 
space without bound, and lapse without end, to 
accommodate its vast proportions and develop its 
immeasurable fruits. While Roman arch and 
theatre go down, and have no successors, the neigh- 
boring shrines are still vocal with prayers and 



2£4 THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

sounding with anthems ; whatever in their material 
and perishable elements gives way being at once 
restored out of the worshipper's undecaying faith 
and love, in promise of temple set on the site of 
temple till the end of all things under the sun. 

The endless duration of Christ's kingdom ! Let 
me, to illustrate it, overleap the broad flood of years, 
from imperial Rome to the multitude of European 
kingdoms that have taken her place. As I came 
within a short sail of the scene of that strife now 
involving the mightiest nations of the globe, and in 
many a town heard the tramp of soldiers through 
the streets or beneath my windows ; or saw the 
artillery rattle over the road eastward ; or passed by 
the camp, whose men and ammunition might be 
summoned to the conflict, — the origin of this 
astonishing strife disclosed in itself but a new tes- 
timony, if not to the best and highest spirit, yet to 
the enduring nature of that kingdom which Christ 
established on the earth. For what is the question 
but one between the Roman Catholic and Greek 
Christians in Jerusalem, as to the particular privi- 
lege, among other claims, of entering through the 
chief door of the church built over the Holy 
Sepulchre of Christ, and who should possess the 
key of that door ? Is there such fire in his ashes ? 
Can his bones, after eighteen hundred years, so move 
the minds of men ? If the temper of the meek and 
lowly Jesus had fully possessed the rival Greek and 
Latin churches, no such contest, indeed, could have 
begun. But it is the yet rude and passionate human 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 225 

mind on which alone Christ has to work ; and the 
depth to which the dispute has penetrated into the 
sensitive and half-sanctified natures of men, dimly 
groping on their way to become followers of that 
Jesus who will finally deliver them from the inordi- 
nate strength of the passions they are now indulging 
and making themselves slaves of in his name, — this 
profound stir, which, though at first belligerent, is 
better than stupid apathy and slavish subjugation to 
tyranny, — shows the grasp which the Son of God 
lays, or is just beginning, with imperfect action, to 
lay, on the human soul. It shows that his kingdom 
is not ceasing, but just advancing its standards. If 
men will fight, — as, alas ! about something they yet 
will, — it is best for them at least to have some high 
motive ; and potent indeed must be the principle of 
that debate which, as it unfolds, is seen to involve the 
rights of the several communities, both of ignorant 
and of civilized man ; which points, we may trust, 
to the settlement of justice for that whole continent, 
whose greatest nations and chief professors of Chris- 
tianity — English, Russian, French — it calls into the 
field for combat ; while the Mahometan, though 
most immediately concerned, his very existence as a 
people depending on the issue, is, after a little tem- 
porary excitement, now the most idle and inefficient 
party in the case ; for what cares he, the dull infidel, 
in his heart, about Christ or the Holy Sepulchre at 
all ? Christ said he came to bring a sword on the 
earth ; and, verily, the sword which he came to 
bring is again unsheathed. For though the war, 



226 THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

as conducted by governments and despotic leaders, 
may be a war of simple policy, arising from no 
prevailing inspiration of right among kings and 
statesmen on any side ; though the great powers of 
Europe appear all of them, out of their way and off 
their own ground, to have gone impertinently where 
they had no business, into that remote Crimea, to 
contend about their balance of power, as they call it, 
as private persons who have quarrels to adjust retire 
to some thick wood or lonely spot to fight their 
deadly duel ; yet there is, to light up the horrors of 
the battle-field, some providential sense of right in 
the masses of people and soldiery ; and, in the 
present condition of the world and human nature, it 
must be confessed there seems to be a terrible 
necessity in the struggle, a sort of doom to that 
bloody baptism, from which we may hope the nations 
will come out purer for their sufferings, and with 
equity for all parties rescued from the clutch of 
brutal force. God, of his mercy, grant this atone- 
ment for so much woe ! Meantime, as the whole 
strife is but the application of a fearful test to 
ascertain what, in the premises, the prerogatives and 
duties of Christians are, it is plain in this fierce 
demonstration also that the kingdom of Christ, his 
domination, so far from being outworn, is, through 
many rough obstacles in the depravity of the human 
soul, just planting its roots ; and, when the storm 
that cleanses is over, through the clouds of war 
may fall a light in which the millions of our race 
can find their way to his sepulchre without a key 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 227 

of iron, or the claim of any exclusive ownership to 
a heap of doubtful stones. 

Yes, the sword too, among other witnesses, I 
claim for his witness. He did not make the sword 
he brought. Its material was in the nature of man. 
It was forged in the heats of the human bosom. 
But when, as great questions of public morals touch 
the international conscience, it leaps from its scab- 
bard, we can only pray that it may be so divinely 
guided and humanly wielded as to hew out a way 
to that righteousness and peace through the world 
in which the kingdom of Christ shall have its 
stability, true and perpetual. 

As, however, I have spoken thus much of the 
manner in which it is involved in the tumults of 
earthly kingdoms, I must add, that, though the 
kingdom of God, in the Lord's own words, may be 
taken by violence, and the violent take it by force, 
it has no violence in itself. To illustrate this, let 
me describe, from recollections of what I have seen, 
the contrast of Christ, as a king, with perhaps the 
most successful worldly despot whose name history 
has preserved. I suppose Napoleon Bonaparte pre- 
sents the greatest instance, not of creative genius, — 
though that too in him was wonderful, — but of 
strictly personal power, power of an overmastering 
will, ever known. I forget not that Alexander over- 
ran the world ; or that Csesar, later, ruled the 
mistress of the world. But the world, in the time 
of Caesar and Alexander, was an easier thing to 
overrun and rule than in the time of Napoleon ; and 



22$ THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

I must consider it at least an unsurpassed example of 
military prowess, strength of will, and intellectual 
resource for action, when the Corsican held the 
modern states of European civilization so widely 
subject to his control ; when the old empire of 
Caesar himself fell before his scarce bearded youth, 
and the distant Asia, where Alexander, the Mace- 
donian, trod and vanquished, shook at the tread of his 
diminutive figure; when England, more than any 
other nation inheritor of Greek and Roman supre- 
macy, feared him as she never feared aught beside ; 
and this Western world, from aged men to children, 
wondered and whispered, as the earthquake-wave of 
his might struck on our shore, what he would do even 
here. But what was his kingdom, — of which, in this 
connection, I make a merely representative use, — in 
its duration what was it, compared with that of Christ ? 
I will say nothing of Waterloo or St. Helena, to 
insult his memory or aggravate the contrast ; I will 
repeat no profane words instituting a likeness be- 
tween these two personages, such as I heard from 
the mouth of an Englishman, in a picture-gallery in 
England, as we together gazed at Napoleon's por- 
trait ; I will not quote even Napoleon's own oft-cited 
words, owning the vast inferiority of his kingdom 
to Christ's. I will only set over against each other, 
very slightly sketched, the pictures of their respec- 
tive kingdoms as I beheld them standing in their 
signals now, — selecting the best that can be found 
for the military hero in the case. 

Of Napoleon I must say, that no man like him has 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 229 

left the print of his foot throughout the Old World. 
The fields of his battles are the great fields ; the 
bridges he desperately crossed amid smoke and 
fire, as bullets flew by and banners were rent over 
him, are the most famous bridges ; the Alpine 
passes he traversed or engineered as roads for his 
troops are in fame, so far as I know in all nature, 
the marked passes ; the towns he entered or slept 
but a night in, distinguished, to this day, for his 
presence and momentary passing ; the inscriptions 
to his honor still held forth, grandly memorable and 
inviolate, from the column on the banks of the 
Seine, where he wished his ashes to repose, made 
from the molten cannon he captured, to the stone 
tablet in the Monks' Hospice of the Great St. Ber- 
nard ; the rooms where he dictated submission to 
magistrates, in every carving and hanging kept as 
they were, to be displayed for a fee to the traveller ; 
the tree in one of the Borromean Islands on whose 
bark he wrote with his knife the Italian word, Bat- 
taglia, — oh, how he wrote that word deep and wide 
over the world with his sword ! — likewise guarded 
for exhibition ; the sword and hat and coat and very 
boots he wore in one or another engagement, ar- 
rayed in ostentatious order; the pictures of his bat- 
tles lining the walls of many a magnificent gallery ; 
the engraved scenes in his life, to his death-bed, 
suspended within the chambers of mean houses as 
well as aristocratic palaces, even in the countries he 
subdued and disgraced ; a tomb, undoubtedly among 
tombs the most splendid and costly in all the world, 

20 



230 THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

occupying the nave of the church where the totter- 
ing remnants of his once-unequalled army abide and 
worship. And what shall I say more ? Amid images 
of golden bees, betokening empire, the mark N. 
upon the shining relics, in the Louvre, of his 
reign, to which N. has been added the numeral I., 
to signify Napoleon the First, at the instigation of 
the present pallid-looking emperor, who would thus 
pass for Napoleon the Third, and who has perhaps 
furnished the most striking of all proofs of his 
great relative's sway, by being able to creep, in his 
shadow, to his throne. 

But all this imperial blazonry, this pompous and 
particular commemoration, is of something past, of 
a man departed, of an empire gone, of a dominion 
once indeed advancing, but pressed back and re- 
duced, from all its advances, into its original bounds; 
of a ruler, as I heard from French and Belgic lips, 
less loved, by hosts even in his own land, than 
hated; and, if by some lauded, by many despised, 
or regarded as scarce himself human, — rather a 
meteor, a dispensation of Providence, a needed whip 
for ancient abuses and follies, a scourge of God. 

Shall I now presume to go on with the compari- 
son or contrast, and say how different, how unspeak- 
ably exalted, from this, the other picture of the 
kingdom of Christ ? — for whom there was no 
defeat in his darkest hour, no Fontainebleau of 
abdication, no far-off lonely spot of exile ; who was 
never banished, though church and state of his 
time, banded together, strove to banish him ; who 



THE ENDUKING KINGDOM. 231 

still lives and reigns, with never-retreating, ever- 
widening empire, in the breasts of men; whose 
meek soldiers are truly, what Napoleon pretended 
were his, invincible ; who has amazed and overcome, 
not a few territories and towns for a while, but is 
stretching the blessed captivity of his spiritual free- 
dom through every latitude and zone ; who has 
built a thousand temples for every fort or arsenal of 
the vulgar conqueror ; and who is continually writ- 
ing his innumerable titles, not on brass or marble or 
cloth of gold, that shall break and crumble and fade, 
but on the fleshly tables of the human heart. 

Witness the cross, — once the brand of shame, 
but now planted in love at the springs and along the 
steeps, the rugged places of the sojourner's way, — 
by its frequency indicating his direction, as though 
it were a guideboard over earth as well as to heaven. 
Witness the images everywhere, in painting and 
sculpture, of his life and death. Witness the poor 
woman I saw, one of others countless, touching her 
fingers to the image of the babe, and then fervently, 
with devotion unquestionably sincere, carrying them 
to her lips. Witness those parents and children, 
making one of a myriad of families, I observed 
going up the mountain, whose affectionate prayers — 
in their alternate, manly, womanly, with boyish and 
girlish, eloquence — fell audibly, a sort of heavenly 
murmur in the sunny day, on my ear as I went by. 
Witness ten thousand proofs, to which I cannot now 
even allude, that the kingdom of Christ is strength- 
ening ; while Napoleon's, though but yesterday it 



232 THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 

rose, is well-nigh sunk to-day. Were I seeking the 
emblem of an enduring force, I should not select 
the bronze figure of the emperor, with his glass 
eying the fortunes of the battle ; but another work 
of art, by a modern hand, yet destined to a lasting 
fame, called the Light of the World, in which 
Jesus is represented at dusk, in his hand a lantern, 
whose beams fall upon his features, and light up his 
soft ruddy hair and delicate countenance, and make 
fruit and flower glow on the soil near his feet, as, 
while the darkness gathers and night hovers all 
around out of the sky, with wistful face of infinite 
tenderness, he proceeds to knock, with the other 
hand, at a cottage door. May we hear him at our 
gate ? For the dwelling and the portal, which the 
painter intended, where are they but within ? 

Christ's, among all other earthly empires, the 
enduring kingdom ! Most affecting is it to see the 
fresh trophies of his supreme rank among men 
rising out of spots where wreck is laid on wreck of 
human power ; where Roman generals threw down 
towers from tremendous heights, to have their own 
dominion, in turn, thrown down ; where the boun- 
daries of modern principalities have wavered to 
and fro like shadows cast by the sun upon battle- 
fields ; where diverse races of men, and customs of 
civilization, and ideas of law and government, and 
orders of society, and modes of literature, have pre- 
vailed for their several periods ; but the rule of the 
one Redeemer, however imperfectly as yet subduing 
the stubborn nature of man, has never been dis- 



THE ENDURING KINGDOM. 233 

placed. Still-, with the right and the sense of right 
divided betwixt them, the nations muster for war 
and meet in bloody strife. One only umpire, for 
thrones and peoples, can pronounce the just decree. 

As I passed through the great courses of travel 
where Germany and Italy look over at each other, 
and saw on every hand the signs of what had moved 
along there in former generations, I fell into silent 
ejaculations in my spirit. How many armies have 
marched upon these heights and amid these vales ! 
How many proud captains have here triumphed, and 
civil rulers set up their sway ! How ancient and 
modern conquerors are, in the token of their succes- 
sive predominance, by these bands of territory 
strangely linked together ! Yet how dimmed and 
hardly traceable are their memorials now ! But what 
monuments are these, new as well as old, ever re- 
stored and brightened into fresh lustre, reared to sig- 
nify the honor and love of the population, and lining 
for hundreds of miles the traveller's way ? What are 
these paintings and sculptures of crucifixes and 
every form of sacrifice and submission ? They are 
of Him who governs men more by his sufferings 
than have all the heroes by their mighty deeds. 

20* 



THE CHURCH. 



The ties of blood and race and speech, 
A common nature's kindly reach, 
The human reason, conscience, heart, 
All from their firmest holdings part. 
He, who his offspring never leaves, 
A bond from his own spirit weaves. 



THE CHURCH. 



The church is a very delicate theme on which to 
give, however fairly, even impressions, or the result 
of a traveller's observations. Yet every religious 
person will at once own the impossibility of omit- 
ting this subject from a list, pretending to any com- 
pleteness, of the facts and ideas in the world, and 
must be willing to have each surveyor of ecclesias- 
tical institutions, on the broad scale of nations, speak 
his honest and impartial word. Unconscious of a 
wish to plead for or against any section or denomi- 
nation of the great Christian body, though perfectly 
willing to have my testimony weighed with reference 
to my own general training and position, I am sure 
I shall not transcend the limits of a generous reader's 
charity, or violate with partisan aim the rules of the 
great republic of letters, if I throw in my frank 
statement with those of a thousand reporters beside. 
Every truly earnest man pardons another's earnest- 
ness. 

The religious traveller, when first he gazes on the 
marvellous constructions, the glorious pomps, and 



238 THE CHURCH. 

glittering processions of ecclesiastical power in 
Europe, may for a moment indulge a feeling, not 
only of admiration, but of envy, at the sight. He 
may be disposed to exclaim, "Oh! if we could have 
at home such brilliant and captivating presentations 
as these of the sacred things of faith and piety ; if 
there could be such noble buildings for the praise 
of God, and such costly works of art in commemora- 
tion of Jesus, and so many impressive ordinances 
and affecting celebrations to mark the notable events 
of the Christian year or the venerable traditions of 
past time ; and if such grave intoning *of ancient 
liturgies, and such enchanting strains of music as 
issue from the mouths of those picked and trained 
singers and these white-vested choristers of boys, 
could be heard in our assemblies, — what an excel- 
lent and perfect accomplishing we should have of 
the homage we would offer to the Most High ! " 

But a little experience of what goes on under this 
so imposing exterior will soon disabuse the sober 
mind of its fond and superficial fancy ; for, after one 
has surveyed all these outside preparations for effect, 
and he begins earnestly to seek for the meaning and 
the heart that shall be proportionate to and worthy of 
the mighty and promising apparatus, alas ! he dis- 
covers that the outward richness does not certify any 
equal inward wealth and inspiration, perhaps not so 
much as he has known embodied in the meanest 
ritual and cheapest edifice ; and wonder at the super- 
ficial spectacle is succeeded by disappointment at the 
poor utmost it contains. As one takes up a shell 



THE CHURCH. 239 

from the shore, gorgeous and shining with all the 
colors of the rainbow, but finds that the living crea- 
ture which made and first had it for an abode is 
long since dead or departed ; so one is sometimes 
forced to feel, under the vast, cunningly wrought, 
and magically painted temple-roof, that this is but the 
shell, once perhaps well occupied when genius came 
from God to inspire the builder's soul, but now, 
under all the fine appearance of religion, with the 
life almost or quite gone out of it. Then he 
recurs with unspeakable satisfaction to his spiritual 
conception of the church, which the Head of the 
church has himself given ; of human beings any- 
where, under any extraneous circumstances, adorned 
or simple, humble or high, united in the name and 
held by the holy magnetism of the presence of 
Christ. So, from all the glories of architecture and 
vestments and melodious voices and viols, his soul 
goes back to the undecorated meeting-house, where, 
like the early disciples with burning heart, he first 
knew his Lord was with him ; or to the lowly vestry 
in which, by the grace of God, he was originally 
touched. 

I was at the Catholic worship in Dresden. It 
seemed more like the embrace of Rome with the 
world than like the simplicity of filial and fraternal 
adoration for which I yearned on that bright sab- 
bath morning. The drums and horns and strings of 
the opera, that had been amusing the people through 
the week, had marched into the temple to conduct 
the divine praise, and, with the loud swell and long 



240 THE CHURCH. 

roll of their harmony, whose ambitious though ex- 
quisite tuning I still seem to hear, to make the 
most prominent part of the service. Handsomely 
carved and nicely curtained boxes in the sides of the 
walls, high above the general assembly in which I 
mixed as in a common crowd, showed the heads of 
members of the royal family, put into that ostenta- 
tious privacy and vain superiority in an act of venera- 
tion for Him, high and lofty indeed, before whom all 
earthly distinctions fade as the morning clouds, and 
are level in the dust ; while it seemed to me that 
the majestically dressed and artistically moving offi- 
cials should rather, like Barnabas and Paul at Lystra, 
have rent their clothes, and run in among the people 
that were impiously sacrificing to them somethin 
at least of their human dignity, and should h 
cried out, " We also are men of like passions with 
you." Alas ! in that region sabbath-day is a play-day 
without, in the streets, and seems almost like a play- 
day within, in the sanctuary. 

I went to the famous shrine of Westminster Ab- 
bey with a multitude to praise God and keep holy 
time. In the very grandeur of the fane seemed to 
be worship. On those noble pillars, vast sheaves of 
stone, the religious affections climbed up to heaven. 
In the graceful curves of the groined ceiling, the 
fascinated imagination slid to and fro for a while, till 
it was fastened as by a spell, caught in a sacred net 
of the associations of all beauty. The prayers be- 
gan with the pure, decorous language of that form, 
ever the same, save for its manifold little variations 



ave 



THE CHURCH. 241 

in one or another connection and latitude, which has 
been made so familiar to the ear of Christendom. 
Very pleasant was the reverent sound. But is it an 
over-critical — may it not be a truly devotional — 
spirit that asks, Is this endless repetition of a few 
formulas all that is meant by prayer, — the public ac- 
knowledgment of the being and mercies of Almighty 
God ? Is this mechanical manner, this monotonous 
speech, into which such stiffly prescribed supplication 
often almost unavoidably sinks, all that is possible in 
these momentous addresses of human creatures to 
Heaven ? Can there be no more adaptedness to oc- 
casions, and to the actual relations of life ? no more 
personal ardor and sincerity, consistent with the out- 
pouring or attempted excitement of general emotion ? 
and never a spontaneous burst, instead of this dull 
recitation ? Oh ! believe it not ! Believe it not, you 
who may yourselves be inclined to such captivating 
formalism ! The bosoms of men may break out to- 
gether, as well as burn in solitude, with thanksgiving 
and veneration to the Power that made us ; and to 
shut up all the emotions belonging to him in a 
prayer-book, is as great an affront, though unin- 
tended, as it would be to read off the expressions of 
our affection to one another only from written lines 
or a printed page. Husbands and wives, sons and 
daughters, brothers and sisters, will it do between 
you ? Neither will it between us all and Heaven. 

I pause to say, Let not any turn in disgust from 
the ardor of these expressions. I know the intended 
benefits of a liturgy. I know it is not a regulated 

21 



242 THE CHURCH. 

service that is alone liable to monotony. I know that 
gifts vary ; and that, in the poverty of a minister's 
spirit or the slowness of his lips, the printed words 
are a succor so great as to render it really doubtful, 
whether, taking the clergy together, some degree of 
habitual form be not expedient. I understand the 
promise, that lies in a response, of bringing the con- 
gregation, as well as the priest, into concerted frame 
of spiritual action. I can see that men in general 
have attained to such poor heights of devotion, and 
are such beginners in the heavenly life, that it is a 
question whether they must not be confined yet 
longer to an exact ritual, as to a sort of alphabet of 
worship. I well perceive, too, how those who offi- 
ciate, by having the aspirations of the assembly in 
their hand and under their eye, are spared the ex- 
haustion of strength which comes from extreme 
expenditure of feeling. But who, for any or all of 
these reasons, will maintain that the ecclesiastical 
custom is the ideal of adoration ? Criticism of the 
rigid Catholic forms on the one, side may indeed also 
be met with criticism of the dividing Protestant 
dogmas on the other. Between a union in modes 
and words tending to become lifeless, and the inde- 
pendence of thought and action that may exclude a 
common spirit, some may deem it hard to choose. 
Considering the double problem, how the churchman 
shall secure freshness of intellect and soul, and how 
the dissenter may harmonize the separate activities 
of a host of minds, let us at least be thankful, that, 
while most of the world is still tied up in arbitrary 



THE CHURCH. 243 

regulations, there is among us an open field for pre- 
scription and freedom to try their opposite methods, 
and compare their respective drawbacks and advan- 
tages. 

But I must not forget what remains of my de- 
scription. The preacher rises. Now, I thought, in 
this liberty, at last, of utterance, the spirit may soar 
as on eagle-wings to a pitch adequate to the unsur- 
passed attractions of the place. Ah! those very 
attractions prevent it. We may well be content 
with the plainness of our gathering and proceeding 
in the congregational order, from the reflection 
that, more than any priestly magnificence, it gives 
room for those persuasive and receptive openings of 
the human breast, in the appeals and responses 
of simple duty and truth, which are hindered by the 
rigid methods of outward show, yet are loftier and 
dearer in the eye of Heaven than any exterior dis- 
play, though of St. Peter's or Solomon's. Only that 
which we ' rely upon in any matter can stand us in 
much stead ; and they who, in religion, have con- 
fidence in the flesh, in any outward thing, certainly 
can never be made perfect in the spirit. Leaning 
upon a staff is inconsistent with running or flying 
towards heaven. So I considered, as I looked 
around at the charms of art and external edifica- 
tion that stole away my regard from the mortal 
exhorter's feeble homily, and said in myself, What 
eloquence, less than that of Demosthenes, could fill 
this loaded air, and make itself heard among these 
voices, from the tombs, all around, of dead poets 



£44 THE CHURCH. 

and heroes and saints ? What personal power could 
supersede this proud antiquity with present energy, 
and subdue this material sublimity and historic opu- 
lence into the mere subordinate service and humble 
following of the pulpit-signal from that little stature 
in the preacher's strain ? He was altogether neutral- 
ized ; so weakened by surrounding shows and super- 
incumbent ordinances, it seemed almost better that 
he should hush. I must own the sin, if sin it were ; 
but I could not help studying the beauteous stains 
upon the glass, and following the fine traceries of 
the windows, and, over the ladders of art and grace 
there everywhere set before me, getting into the 
kingdom my own abstracted and wandering way, 
instead of being able to mount with the somewhat 
slow and heavy ascent of the actual performance ; 
and my strong and decisive conclusion was, Oh! let 
me be satisfied with whatever hearing of the word 
is my privilege in assemblies without great exhibi- 
tion or any means of pretence, more than with all 
this color and noise and march and heraldry of 
religion. I certainly will not reproach as un- 
generous, or at all of a niggardly, illiberal hand, 
the Providence which has confined me and my 
friends and kinsfolk and countrymen to such com- 
parative bareness in the modes of religious service. 

The constraining of the soul to love and righteous- 
ness by the earnest pleading of the human voice is 
worth more than all the church formularies and archi- 
tectural magnificence by which, through some fatal law 
of compensation, it is so commonly hindered and dis- 



THE CHURCH. £45 

placed. I count not my forefathers faultless ; I will 
not take up their quarrel against the bishops, who 
may be the needful ministers of Heaven to great 
masses of mankind ; I will even confess, that, 
grimly bent on reaching to the very soul of things, 
they stripped life too bare, and gave us sometimes 
an Egyptian skeleton, instead of beauty and truth; 
but, knowing that more often they woke the powers 
of the world to come in the human soul, seeing 
from what burdens of moral death and material 
superstition they escaped and beforehand delivered 
us, I will glory in their line, nor be willing to ex- 
change the Puritan heritage for all legacies of cost 
and splendor in the most imposing structures and 
elaborate institutions of the world. If the cus- 
tomary question be put to the returning traveller, 
what change or modification his sojourn has made in 
his notions respecting religion, the reply he must at 
present be indulged in is, that he comes home no 
sceptic, no Roman Catholic, no English Churchman, 
yet more deeply than ever convinced that Christiani- 
ty — evangelical, historical, spiritual Christianity — 
is the hope of the world ; and more than ever com- 
forted with the simplicity of that administration of 
Christianity in which he was brought up, and to 
which he is still accustomed. No charm of cathe- 
dral spires in the sky above, or of cathedral services 
beneath, has seduced his heart, or can, in the least, 
rob from him his old first loyalty to the independent 
worship which he was born in and counts it his 
delight to serve. 

21* 



246 THE CHURCH. 

In one of the most venerable minsters of Eng- 
land, — that in the town of York, — I attended, in 
good weather, on a week-day service. The clergy 
and the choir made about half the assembly, the 
mere handful of which looked strangely in the cor- 
ner of a building, founded for the worship of a thou- 
sand years ago, that could have held almost the 
whole city's population. Noble, indeed, is that 
building. Its massive walls and high square towers, 
hoary with years, its arches and monuments within, 
affect the soul like everlasting anthems in marble and 
prayers without ceasing in the rock. But, when the 
accommodation was compared with the attendance, 
the huge, hollow chambers looked like a lake whose 
waters have been dried up to their lowest bed. En- 
chanting sight, even the empty structure ! But is it 
more than the life of humanity dedicated to God ? 
Does it approach, in honor, to what the missionary 
to the Chippewa Indians beheld, — three acres of 
prairie-land, without a house or a tree, covered with 
a congregation of fifteen thousand, to listen to his 
preaching of the word of God ? No : this is the 
interior and essence, that the exterior and accident, 
of the church. In the minster, the songs echoed 
sweetly through the aisles, and rang down distinct 
from the curving granite top ; while the notes of the 
organ, at every stop or interval, died away most me- 
lodiously, as though some metallic harpsichord were 
swept by unseen upper fingers in the air. But I 
would rather have heard the hallelujahs, like the 
voice of many waters, from the myriad bosoms of 



THE CHURCH. 247 

the savage red men, aboriginals of the soil, on the 
western plain, returning, not from any stone temple - 
top, but from the sky where God dwells. 

Let not this attempt to define and magnify what 
is vital in the church of Christ, in distinction 
from what is superinduced and unessential, imply, 
however, any uncharitable doubt that the purposes 
of religion are, in every sect and portion of the 
church, largely accomplished. What is essential in 
the church must, of course, have, and it will put on, 
some clothing. It will be variously clad in one 
place or another. Only let those who are called 
Christians, in every place, beware of taking the 
clothing for the thing clothed, or of imposing their 
particular garment of Christianity as the only fit one 
upon others. Let them remember, too, that, as 
with the human body, the more clothing required to 
be put on, the lower is proved to be its life ; so, the 
more the church is dressed, the less, in actual de- 
monstration, is the vitality of the spirit. An exces- 
sively official and formalistic operation of the church 
may, in some respects, be adapted to a low condition 
of mankind, — of those learning their letters in reli- 
gion ; but, in the name of God and Christ, the mo- 
ment they are susceptible of it, let them have a 
higher teaching and ministration. Otherwise, at 
length, as the Bible is true, " the letter killeth ; " the 
form will begin to extinguish the soul. In fine, as 
so much has been said of the moving efficacy of 
forms, especially in the Romish church, in foreign 
countries, let one bear witness that nothing in those 



248 THE CHURCH. 

forms made any remote approximation in power or 
persuasiveness to the sermons and supplications, in 
the same countries, whose sincere accents fell on his 
ears in the Protestant communion. Yet if we are 
at all to trust to forms, more than to the spirit, then 
I hesitate not to say, Let us go to Rome at once. In 
the Romish service there is often, at least, a warmth 
and earnestness, to which that of every other formal 
church, in England or America, seems affected and 
cold. One can but admire the deep policy and mas- 
terly working on the human mind of the papal sys- 
tem, — every sense of whosoever, in the stream that 
is perpetually flowing in and flowing out, enters any 
of its tabernacles taken possession of : the eye, with 
paintings, statues, alcoves, altars, columns, and cos- 
tume ; the ear, with entrancing sounds of tongues 
and pipes and chords ; the smell, with fragrance from 
dexterously swung and adroitly caught, rising and 
descending, censers ; the touch, with holy water, in 
the ever-renewed emblem and motion of the cross ; 
and whatever is weak, dependent, confiding, in the 
human heart, at once seized by an ancient authority, 
held forth in manifold symbols, and a professed ever- 
lasting infallibility, now declared from the dogmatic 
creed, and now stalking, in the shape of ornamented, 
almost military, officers, through the submissive, 
adoring throng. But you cannot help asking, How 
would Jesus Christ look in such a scene ? Quite at 
home, think you ? How would he, the simple, fa- 
miliar, loving, and holy, like the strange mixture of 
superstition and despotism with humility and love ? 



THE CHURCH. 249 

Where would he prefer to stay ? Amid this pomp 
of praise, this aristocracy of rank and caste in reli- 
gion ? or where even two or three in his name, in 
simple devoutness and modesty of mutual regard, 
were met together ? I can only say, Read the 
whole New Testament, and answer. 

The traveller, be his prepossessions what they 
may, sees well that the tooth of time is eating fear- 
fully into the structures of the ancient church, and 
that other destructive influences are gnawing at the 
ideas those structures were reared to represent. 
Gazing at the massive doors, enclosing the rotting 
remnants of those which Ambrose shut in the face of 
Theodosius, he reflects that the strength by which 
they were shut has withered away with themselves ; 
and that, to beard arbitrary political power, no Am- 
brose will return. Some noble walls and towers are 
ascending ; others are sinking, or maintained at a 
cost which renders it doubtful if a period be not at 
hand when men will be no longer able or willing, 
with the enormous contributions required, even to 
keep in repair what the former generations built. 
Sadly, in York and Oxford, and many another 
monument of antiquity, the carved stone moulders 
down ; and though one or another broken shaft or 
crumbling pinnacle may be replaced, yet the feeling 
cannot be avoided, that the whole outward, solemn 
edification of the past there tends to obsoleteness 
and decay. A momentary regret comes over the 
mind, as one contrasts this decline with the rise, in 
the present age, of industry and commerce, setting 



250 THE CHURCH. 

up their marble and granite structures, the polished 
smoothness or clean and sparkling fracture of whose 
solid blocks seems to promise everlasting duration. 
But he will not grieve inconsolably who thinks he 
sees the soul of man in these days, with humane 
and pious thoughts, more than ever before, itself 
made the temple of God ; nor will any true lover 
of God or man consider a literal canon or rubric or 
order of service the essential thing, if the living 
hearts of a congregation, beating together, shall 
form our Book of Prayer. But, while men are in 
all things so much under the influence of the senses, 
the Romish, or something akin to the Romish, re- 
ligion must prevail. The understanding makes dis- 
tinctions, and separates ; creed begets creed, and 
opinions war against the opinions of which they are 
the offspring : but a solemn form, having ever the 
same shape and quality to the senses, is a medium 
and common language, through which each worship- 
per can express his own individual thought and feel- 
ing ; while all, from the most feeble-minded and 
illiterate to the most intellectual and refined, are in 
it bound together. To cure children or adults of 
leanings to Bomanism, it might seem enough to send 
them to Borne. Alas ! not so. All the shock to the 
soul, from her deceits and superstitions, cannot 
suffice to countervail the attractions of her own 
showy, scarlet person. The sensuous bias, once al- 
lowed to operate, is found to be fatal. There is no 
resource against it but in the law of reason and of a 
holy love. 



SOCIETY. 



The spirit drives me from the throng : 

Dear is my thought ; it holds me loug. 

The spirit draws me back again: 

Dearer I find my fellow-men. 

With lonely strength, with social love, 

The perfect plan of life is wove ; 

From one in all, and all in one, 

A heavenly model is begun ; 

And every child of God makes part 

Of that great whole, the human heart. 



SOCIETY. 



A great ship's company, of which I once made a 
poor unit, has often very vividly returned to my 
imagination, as a figure more or less accurately re- 
presenting the whole mass of actual society. One 
man of genius on board, for the sake of economy, 
was in the steerage ; wealth and rank elbowed 
wealth and rank in the cabin ; certain rude qualities, 
predominating over all the refinements of feeling 
and character, were in bold, if not sometimes inso- 
lent, command of all ; while any thing great and 
splendid in virtue, by only an occasional flash in 
conversation or decisive stroke in practical emergen- 
cies, showed the hiding-place, where, awaiting a time 
of need, like lightning in the cloud, it for the most 
part quietly lay. Great exigencies show men their 
places, produce spiritual as well as political revolu- 
tions, and anticipate the sentences of the judgment- 
day. Yet there is a grand equality, as well as 
distinction, in what we call society. 

Human society arises by virtue of the different 
gifts and conditions it has pleased the Creator to 

22 



254 SOCIETY. 

allot to different individuals, all having the same 
fundamental constitution. These differences are not 
meant to divide men in their feelings, but rather for 
the very purpose of uniting them, — to unite them 
more closely than perfect equals in faculty and 
situation ever could be. Though one may be poor, 
and another rich ; one celebrated, and another undis- 
tinguished ; one learned, and another ignorant ; one 
at the bottom of the social scale, and another at the 
top, — the wealth or honor, knowledge or rank, is no 
reason for pride, and honest inferiority of position 
or possession no occasion for abjectness ; but these 
divinely ordained diversities of life, like the concord 
of diverse notes on a musical instrument, should 
make the actual harmony of mankind. Let me 
illustrate this noble Christian doctrine through seve- 
ral points connected with pictures of my own expe- 
rience. 

First, there is the very obvious dissuasive from 
pride in those affections which may adorn and dig- 
nify the lowliest estate. Two scenes in one of the 
cities of Great Britain occurred in my sight almost 
simultaneously, as if designed to show this. One 
scene was humble, the other royal. Let the humble 
one come first. It was a parting between some 
emigrants and those of their kindred and friends 
who were to stay at home. I counted it a piece of 
good fortune, that, seeing often the arrival of the 
emigrant here, I could thus witness his departure 
there. The place was a railway station. Such as 
were taking their leave were already seated in the 



SOCIETY. 255 

cars. In the raw wind and wet, their nearest rela- 
tives waited without. The two companies being 
thus cut off from each other, wistful faces, weeping 
eyes, and waved adieus still bound them together. 
Where was the necessity of the separation ? Some 
promising, bright-lettered advertisement, such as I 
had myself read, pasted up on the corners of the 
streets, had attracted their regard. Some big and 
famous ship, with a rich name, — the " Golden Sun," 
or some other poetry of fortune, painted under the 
horn of plenty on her stern, — was to set sail for 
Australia the next week ; and, at a cheap rate, those 
out of employment at home, or toiling under some 
hard landlord, could be transported to mines of 
wealth on the other side of the globe. Yet, now 
they have made up their mind to go, their dear old 
native land clings to them closer than they had 
ever thought ; and they find the process painful, of 
drawing out their roots from the spots where they 
have lived, if not flourished, so long. 

The train waits long, the damp breeze blows, 
the clouds threaten ; still the remnants of the broken 
households linger round the windows and doors, 
through which, to and fro, eager hands are stretched, 
and confused glances fly. As I gazed on the band, 
I knew that one of them was a father, the next a 
mother, a third a sister or brother ; for nature is 
eloquent to tell such things, without any special 
inquiry or information beside. When human beings 
live in the affections belonging to the relations they 
mutually sustain, we need not search the family 



256 SOCIETY. 

record or town register to ascertain what the rela- 
tions are. We shall know very well whether you 
are husband or wife, son or daughter, lover or 
faithfully betrothed, by your conduct describing 
you ; that is, we shall know if you are such more 
than in name. So I knew, and seemed to see the 
bonds that ran there, invisible to eyes of flesh, from 
bosom to bosom. The signal of starting is given. 
One and another from the crowd leap forward for a 
farewell grasp or last earthly salutation ; the young 
earnestly tearful, — aged men and women, who 
cannot quite bear the sight, turning their heads 
away. A quarter of a mile glides the train on the 
rails, and unexpectedly stops ; whereupon the for- 
saken ones rush forward again to speak other final 
words, or look other speechless looks, for which the 
few minutes' delay gives further opportunity. Back 
a little way, the locomotive pushes its long burden ; 
back goes the social throng, as though it were a 
living attachment to the dead vehicles. Thus to and 
fro repeatedly, the almost mingling feet and wheels 
passed together, — every pause filled with affection- 
ate tokens, — till, in the warmth and contagion of 
this sustained emotion, I felt almost I was one of 
the kinsmen, and had a brother's right to give and 
take greeting and blessing with the rest. So the ties 
of kindred take hold of those of humanity. 

As I remarked the contrast between the dumb, 
unsympathizing mechanism of iron and wood, rolling 
hither and thither, and the vital interest of the per- 
sons assembled, I re-asserted in my heart the dignity 



SOCIETY. 257 

of human nature, above all material things, in the 
affections that may kindle its humblest forms. Ay, 
such affections will not be quenched by the rains and 
snows that shall beat on those emigrant heads, nor 
be blown away by the tempestuous gales of the 
middle sea, nor be frozen in the black frosts of the 
southern cape, but yearn back all the more for dis- 
tance and hardship and privation, and peradventure 
save from sin, with the fond memories of that 
declining, gray-headed parentage, and pure, fair- 
haired sisterhood, which those departing sons and 
brothers left behind ; or shall touch them with sad 
consolations, as possibly they sit disappointed over 
the fruitless dusty heaps where they dig, — their 
golden visions, like broken bubbles, scattered into 
gloomy emptiness ; or, in their success and fortunate 
thriving, shall draw them, as the immigrant Irish on 
these shores, in noble loyalty to their own hearts' 
best promptings, in the year of famine, were drawn, 
with charity, exceeding even that of missionary 
societies, to send of their gain to the needy in their 
unforgotten homes. 

The other scene, which makes part of my present 
exemplification, was one that, very shortly after, I 
went to witness on the opposite side of the same 
city, in Scotland. It was the passage through her 
northern borders of the queen of the realm, — as I 
need not say, a shining spectacle, which a multitude 
of tens of thousands gathered, partly to make as 
they beheld ; while, so far as I know, of the emi- 
grants' parting I was the solitary interested outside 

22* 



258 SOCIETY. 

spectator. In pomp of appearance, indeed, this lat- 
ter scene was far distinguished from the first. By a 
worshipper of names and a respecter of titles, the 
former might be wholly despised, as unworthy to be 
referred to in the same connection. Yet I could not 
see that the muster of the town from every lane and 
by-way, the thunder of cannon, the long lines of 
glittering soldiery, with the masses of citizens on 
either side for the living walls between which the 
regal and princely carriages might pass forth, gave 
to the grand display a real glory beyond that of the 
honest sentiments of love that rudely graced the 
emigrants' unpretending farewell. Ah ! the real 
glory, — if in this world of shows and shadows we 
will speak of reality, — in either case, was that of 
human affection. It lay in whatever there existed 
of sincere and disinterested devotion to others' hap- 
piness and the true interests of mankind. No throng 
of admiring observers, indeed, would expect the 
emigrant troop, awaiting them from one stopping- 
place to another ; no magnificent reception anywhere 
would be given them ; no marshals would herald 
their way, or court journal recount their progress ; 
they could never have such a place of Highland- 
sport and recreation as their queen was returning 
from ; but, with emigrants or queens, the eye of God 
looks only at the degrees of inward purity and charity 
that sanctify and inflame the breast. Loyalty to a 
just ruler, to the civil law he executes, to the symbol 
of righteous authority he is, may be a beautiful thing ; 
I am glad in any land to behold it ; but it is no more 



SOCIETY. 259 

beautiful than loyalty to those original ties of human 
nature, running through our hearts, which began be- 
fore dynasties, and shall outlive the mention of ter- 
restrial empires. 

Take, then, for my first delineation, the emigrant. 
I have often been asked if I saw the queen. I am 
tempted to say that I saw, not only the honored and 
beloved queen, but the poor creature to whom her 
sore-taxed territory no longer gave food or foot-hold ; 
and who, therefore, sundering every familiar link of 
acquaintance or nativity, must go forth a voyager to 
south-eastern or south-western climes, or come to do 
for us the work our children disdain. Therefore I 
have drawn this portrait of the emigrant, because, in 
his almost innumerable host, on his long voyaging 
or journey, he is a phenomenon quite as remarkable 
in the modern world as the stationary, presiding 
power of a nation ; and, in the actual influence he 
exerts on the destinies of the world, may, in his per- 
son, furnish proof, that, be a man or a woman what 
he or she may in station or official function, there 
is no ground for one to be puffed up against another 
in his outwardly inferior place or work. One uni- 
form heart is under the costume of emigrant or em- 
peror ; only, as I saw the coming out of that heart in 
the emigrant's trial more than through the imperial 
smile, — in which I repeatedly had my little share, — 
I shall remember him longest and with most concern, 
whether as beheld in the outset of his course, or 
afterwards represented again before me in a man re- 
turning from that fifth continent of the world in the 



260 SOCIETY. 

Oriental seas, with the distressful story of his ice- 
covered bark tossing long near the frigid zone. As 
the question, What shall be done with the emigrants 
coming almost by thousands every day ? so agitates 
just now our politics, let it not be deemed unseason- 
able to cast this friendly picture of him on the angry 
and tempestuous tide. 

But another dissuasive from being puffed up, on 
account of any social difference we may suppose in 
our favor, may be found in the dignity of labor, 
which, like disinterested love, is alike honorable, 
through all its modes, in every class or person. 
Therefore let me add to the likeness of the emi- 
grant one of the laborer. I will take what might ap- 
pear the least and meanest example, from a visit in 
Lower Germany to a mine of salt, which, in its 
dark, subterranean recesses, has been wrought, cen- 
tury after century, since the time of the Romans. 
As I compared the toilers in those dim caves with 
the travellers for pleasure, party after party of whom 
explored them for curiosity, I could not put the 
humble toilers at any disadvantage in my respect. 
A diversity, indeed, was there in the occupation or 
fate of the two classes. The travellers enjoyed the op- 
portunity to amuse themselves everywhere through 
the world, going from country to city, and ocean- 
shores to Alpine-peaks. The toilers were confined 
to a circuit, narrow indeed, many of them under the 
rocky ribs of a mountain, in which was the mineral 
it was their business to extract, and were lighted to 
their task, not by the lamp of the glorious sun, but 



SOCIETY. £61 

by a wretched, smoking wick of oil. The entrance 
to the dusky chambers of their industry was by a 
path cut through the very side of the hill, with 
scarce more than room for one to move comfortably, 
but advancing straight forward into the bowels of the 
earth, furlong after furlong, till the novice, inex- 
perienced in such things, might begin to shudder as 
if actually entombed, never to come forth. The 
variously colored crystals gleamed through the dark, 
as the flame of the guide's torch flared abroad, — 
the particles of every hue imparting, from the finger 
that bore them to the tongue, that saline quality, es- 
sential to human and animal health, which God has 
so wonderfully treasured up among the very clods of 
the land as well as in the waves of the sea, so that 
even in such interior territories it may not be out 
of reach. Steep descent after descent carries us into 
abyss after abyss of this strange internal workshop, 
till we come at length to a lake of brine, — in the 
midnight of the cavern appearing of immeasurable 
extent, — only partially illuminated by a circle of 
candles on its invisible shores, and, more than aught 
ever seen beside, affecting me like the revelation 
of another state of being, — perhaps that under- 
world by heathen poets described, which modern 
theologians still talk of; for there, verily, stood the 
ferryman in his boat, as if his office were to convey 
disembodied souls across the flood to their doom. 
But we were going back to the world we had left ; 
for, from the farther side, by another long avenue, 
similar to the one by which we approached, we 



262 SOCIETY. 

travelled towards the light of day, which, at the vast 
distance, looked like nothing but a sparkling star, 
gradually enlarging till it opens, as we emerge, into 
a flood of lustre. 

Reflecting on this one of a thousand like scenes 
in the retrospect of so peculiar a journey, my emo- 
tion was of respect to the dignity of labor. It was 
not particularly that an endless troop of wayfarers 
should deign to investigate those lower regions, and 
pay the customary fee for their curious privilege ; 
it was not that the imperial owners and monopolists 
of this secret wealth should from time to time exa- 
mine their singular estate, or that monuments of 
solid salt should be erected and carved inside there 
with sculptured names and dates, like marble shafts 
in courts and temples on the surface of the earth, in 
memory of their princely coming and condescension. 
It was the nobility of labor, untitled and unknown, 
save for its effects on the common good. Ah! I 
think sober men are sometimes disposed to give up, 
and be ashamed of, their titles, when they see how 
poor and empty they often are, compared with the 
substantial heraldry of toil, not figured on parch- 
ment, but in the actual tools it handles, yet more 
promotive of the great cause of human progress and 
welfare than all the weapons ever wielded in war. 
Yes, labor, I say. In all labor, says the Old Bible, 
there is profit ; more profit, indeed, than in any in- 
dolence or conventional display or service of fashion. 
Six hundred years and more of its honorable descent 
were there set before me on the spot, from the time 



SOCIETY. 263 

that the masters of Italy and the world pierced the 
soil to gather riches with their spades, instead of 
wresting them from others with their spears. Dy- 
nasty after dynasty had, in the surrounding territory, 
risen and gone down ; one conqueror had driven out 
another, to be himself next driven out ; the clash of 
arms and the issue of blood had been often heard and 
seen in that Austrian neighborhood ; but the sons 
of industry, generation after generation, had quietly 
succeeded each other, — children taking up the instru- 
ments that had dropped from dead parents' hands, 
with scarce an interruption to these peaceful strug- 
gles, — digging away floor and roof of their internal 
abode, and washing out the wealth of the globe with 
streams, fresh as they flowed in, to be fully saturated 
at their mouth, — ah ! more beautiful than the 
streams of gore that had redly furrowed the outside ; 
showing the dignity of labor, and all laborers, with 
head or heart or hands, united by it. 

I use the single instance in my description, that 
I may illustrate the praiseworthiness always in this 
world of useful exertion. Nor be it pronounced 
an exaggeration of the happiness that is attainable by 
the mass of mankind, as much as by the favorites of 
fortune, if I testify to a cheerfulness in the faces of 
those workmen, under such seemingly untoward cir- 
cumstances, in the shadows of that endless night or 
perpetual eclipse, — the shining of the sun amazing 
them as much as its occultation does us ; a cheer- 
fulness which not a few of my fellow-passengers, 
through all the splendors of nature and art, might 



26i SOCIETY. 

well have envied. Neither let it be called a too 
radical view of the varieties, higher and lower, of 
the human lot, if I profess to discern no outward 
honor so great as pertains to those who, in one way 
or another, are fulfilling the almighty Creator's pri- 
meval order to subdue the earth, and have dominion, 
not of inheritance or form, but of talent and strength, 
over it. 

Another dissuasive from social pride among any 
members of the social body, I seemed to myself to 
see in the contributions which all the active and use- 
ful members of that body bring to the common civi- 
lization of mankind. I need offer here no argument 
but the very aspect of a great city. Take the great- 
est in the world, — London. Greatest, I call it ; for, 
if any Chinese town exceeds it in population, none 
can equal it in importance. Every other city, that I 
saw, it transcended in solidity, in majesty, in unpre- 
tending, almost sleepy, power, active as it was, in the 
evidence of wealth and the prospect of endurance. 
Wonderful product of humanity ! marvellous flower 
on the tree of life ! Millions of people, — about as 
many as in all New England, — providentially met 
together in one mass and motion ; endless lines of 
building ; measureless flow of the tide of existence, 
whose banks your feet, however untired, cannot out- 
pace ; no nation or province on the face of the globe, 
from Hindostan to Oregon, by its own offspring, in 
this vast assembly, unrepresented ; more strangers 
every day in the streets than natives in most of our 
cities ; no article of commerce in the whole sphere 



SOCIETY. 265 

that may not moire surely be purchased there than in 
the spot of its manufacture or growth ; no specimen 
or modification of human nature that does not in 
the huge fabric find a place ; nothing so low in the 
earth but there it may be seen at the foot of the 
ladder, and nothing so high but there it consti- 
tutes the top. Yet this spectacle of numberless 
and enormous diversities is the very spectacle most 
urgently enforcing the argument of mutual and 
common respect ; for how marvellously composed, 
how subtly intermingled, how variously derived 
from every quarter, right and left, above and below, 
are the materials and elements of this civil prosperi- 
ty ! Has any king prescribed, or conqueror intro- 
duced, or caste created it all? Who graded the 
street, along which the lordly carriage so smoothly 
runs? Who hewed and laid the level pavement, 
clear in all weather for myriads of the gay population 
so leisurely to walk ? Who smoothed and planted 
and fenced the parks, whose blooming beauty is 
shared by crests and coronets with childhood's 
play and with mean attire ? Who reared the prince- 
ly structures, around which liveried servants, solemn 
sentinels, and martial bands, parade ? Who cement- 
ed the walls and vaults, within which treasure is 
here guarded, and there crime ? Who brought this 
inestimable sum and changeful richness of goods, for 
that comfort and luxury, from every longitude and 
clime, — fur from arctic, spice from tropic, coasts ? 
Who dived for the pearl, polished the diamond, wove 
the silk, crushed the grape, smelted the ore, sifted 

23 



266 SOCIETY. 

the gold, sowed and reaped the grain, and shaped 
metal and wool, fruit or plant, for enjoyment or use ? 
No king did it ; no conqueror did it ; no caste in 
society did it. Who did it ? Nobody in particu- 
lar. Mankind, human nature, did it ; every one 
who toils did it ; God himself, through his crea- 
tures, did it. Truly, many things, to work out a 
vast accomplishment, have been done here. Who 
shall cast up their figures, and assign their several 
portions ? Before this immensity of achievement, 
under this combination of glory, what royal preten- 
sion shall not sink, what private claim of nobleness 
shall not be abashed ? Imagination flags, and enu- 
meration gives up her count of such figures. Who, 
with gift more cunning than throned patronage 
could bestow, or ancient houses could inherit, or 
wealthy banks, with their hundred millions sterling, 
could multiply, lined the walls of those interior 
chambers with the splendors of painting, and made 
their corners lustrous with images of marble, — as 
though genius meant that rank and order and wealth, 
even in their own possession and home, on their 
couch and at their table, should do it reverence ? 
Ah! that smoke, from numberless roofs, of London's 
atmosphere, rising for ever to meet the mist of the 
sky and to overhang the concentrated glory of the 
world, shadows forth something more conspicuous 
than kingly succession, or purse-proud ease, or aris- 
tocratic assumption. That hum from this mighty 
heart, going forth every hour, at noon and midnight, 
over a hundred roads, to mingle with the murmur 



SOCIETY. 267 

of the all-encompassing sea, speaks of something 
finer than costly living, or courteous visiting, or vain 
adorning ; though these may think themselves the 
finest things that exist. It is the equal worth of 
every honest and religious offering, from lofty seats 
or low ones, to that general weal, which subsists not 
in few terms, but upon a thousand conditions, — the 
immense structure of civilized life being hung to 
swing so safe and easy on countless little cords. 
Even the slave on his master's plantation — whom 
we may be too nice in our sensibilities to think we 
could ever approach or take the hand of, or whose 
condition some self-condemning tyrant over his own 
servants abroad or miserable scorner of mankind 
may make our well-deserved republican reproach — 
might say, with a voice reaching from Charleston to 
Boston, and from Boston to London, " Lo, from my 
dark-stained hands, the stuff of your white clothing, 
the seasoning of your food, the flavor of your drink, 
the pleasure of your freedom ! I, unpaid, have 
been among the builders of your so fine social pros- 
perity ! God grant me the justice in which man is 
so tardy ! " 

Nowhere so much as in a great city does society, 
in all its worse and all its better elements, come to a 
head. Abroad in its streets, one feels as in an ocean 
of humanity, swept about by those tides of life which 
are stronger than gulf-streams. As he listens, he 
distinguishes, amid the general roar of this sea, the 
separate dash of a thousand particular sounds, coming 
from wheels, human cries, and clattering hoofs, now 



268 SOCIETY. 

growing fainter, and again more distinct. A shout 
of passion, a call of alarm, an entreaty of affection, 
mingle together. The soldier orders you back from 
a gateway, the driver warns you from his carriage- 
path, and the workman's sentinel from the eaves of 
a building under repair. Traders and beggars hang 
on your steps, and beseech your regard. Heavy ar- 
tillery at the walls speaks, as the voice and mighty 
throat of the whole population, to announce great 
public events. A wandering minstrel touches his 
harp softly in the back-yard of your dwelling. 
Meantime, black death, the cholera, rages dreadfully 
around ; while toil and play and feast and song go 
on, and keep it strange company. Such was my 
voyage through the great deep of gay, sad Paris ! 
Who, but He that ordained, can solve the mystery 
of this social being? 



COUNTRY. 



23* 



Dear soil! whose growth is mingled in my blood, 

To thee unebbing sets my feeling's flood ; 

Deep through most secret chambers of my mind 

Engravings of thy lightest traits I find. 

The tints so fast on Egypt's walls shall fade ; 

But not the surer colors thou hast laid. 

As body joins in one with soul, no bound 

Between thee and my yearning breast is found. 

So let the precious early influence last 

Till Memory's self be something in the past. 



COUNTRY. 



One of the sentiments which travelling must touch 
is that of patriotism. He who cares little about 
any thing else abroad will be eager to compare other 
countries with his own ; and, however foreign cli- 
mates affect his health, his love of native land will 
rise or fall in the thermometer of his heart. It 
must be confessed, that, whether with those who 
rove or stay at home, patriotism, formerly with the 
fathers and founders of the state a feeling so in- 
tense, is now a very variable element, subject to 
many weather-changes and modifications ; so that no 
query to the returning pilgrim is more common than 
his opinion of the merits of foreign nations in rela- 
tion to the United States. Upon such a query will 
probably at once arise in the pilgrim's mind a two- 
fold remembrance. If, before he started, he has 
been warmly interested in the many questions so 
fiercely debated among us, which make our politics 
and society such a torrid atmosphere, he will re- 
member the cool sense of relief from domestic 
discussions in other climes at first so grateful. But 



% i % COUNTRY. 

he will remember, too, how speedily his interest in 
those same discussions returned, and how he felt 
there were in all the world no questions beside so 
dear to him, or so important to humanity. 

But travellers and citizens alike are sometimes 
recreant to their country. The patriotic principle is 
lost or violated in divers ways among different 
classes. With some it appears to be driven out by, 
their philanthropy or idea of philanthropic duty. 
Men of severe and reformatory conscience are apt 
to see very sharply the evil near home, in their 
neighbors or the civil state they are subjects of, and 
the institutions under which they live ; and, if the 
kindly affections in them are less active than the 
conscience, they will overlook the good in their own 
community or nation : whereupon may follow disgust 
at their birthplace and political companionships ; 
then denunciation of the whole course and adminis- 
tration of affairs, whosoever may be at their head ; 
with cries even for disunion, insurrection, or bloody 
resistance to law, and preposterous over-praise of 
other peoples on the earth, to sharpen still further 
the contempt of one's own. Such persons, receiving 
the flatteries of society in foreign parts, instead of 
feeling a proper tenderness for the reputation of 
their own mother-country, and covering her shame, 
so far as they honestly may, by holding forth what 
there is also of purity and glory about her, may be 
tempted rather unnlially to descant upon her sins 
and miseries, and side with her malign ers and foes. 

Then there are those whose patriotism dies out, if 



COUNTRY. 273 

indeed it were ever born in them, because they 
really do not like the free republican spirit of our 
government. They look back after their own, or 
their ancestors' origin, across the sea. They are 
childishly dazzled yet by the splendors of despot- 
ism, and pleased with the pride of an old aristocracy. 
They are untimely tories so long after the date. 
A noble lover of freedom, both in politics and reli- 
gion, to a disdainful son of America said, " Speak 
well, my child, of the country that gives you your 
bread ! " Ay, we might add, speak well of the coun- 
try where you were born, or had your breeding ; 
where the first elements of knowledge have been 
instilled into you, and the earliest ideas of duty 
impressed from the holiest laws of Heaven : where 
the privileges of liberty have been enjoyed by you, 
even if, in your unworthy bosom, its aspirations were 
never kindled ; where your fathers' ashes rest till 
the resurrection, and your own and your children's 
must soon repose. Let us all speak well of it. 
Those who cannot had really better emigrate, and 
go where they can live content. 

Once more : the vulgar partisan ; slave of the 
caucus and cabal ; tool and devotee of cunning, 
selfish policy ; worshipper, though in hypocrisy, of 
men, — with still greater meanness, and less ex- 
cuse, — sacrifices patriotism, all genuine love of 
country, though he boast it ever so loudly, to party- 
spirit. 

Now, if a man ask suddenly why he should love 
his country, I do not know that any reply should at 



274 COUNTRY. 

first be made, but that it is his country. That is 
reason enough. Love of country is, in our consti- 
tution, one of the -primary, divinely ordained senti- 
ments, springing up in every generous bosom, like 
the love of kindred, the love of friends, the love 
of God. I do not find it necessary to ascertain 
whether my country be the greatest and most excel- 
lent country the sun ever saw before I can con- 
clude to love it. I should love it better, more 
loftily, if it were more excellent ; but I should 
love it, — so God help me ! — whether, compared 
with others, it were excellent or not. Quaintly 
Charles Lamb says, "It matters not to tell me how 
many mothers in the world there are better than 
mine : she is my mother; that suffices for me." So 
our country is our mother. We are made of her 
dust yonder by God, who is our Father. We are 
but unnatural children when she is not dear to us. 
As we love our friends in spite of their faults, — not, 
as some say, for their faults, — so with our native 
land. We should never, indeed, join in the impious 
exclamation, " Our country, right or wrong ; " we 
should never love or defend the wrong in our coun- 
try, but honor and laud only the right. Yet let us 
remember, that, by the law of mutual influence in 
the members of the same commonwealth, as of the 
same family, we share alike in her dignity and dis- 
grace ; and, while happy in the one, strive, not 
bitterly, but affectionately, to rid her, as ourselves, 
of the other. 

But is there no reason, beyond natural instinct, 



COUNTRY. 275 

why we should intelligently love our own American 
country ? Yes : in one word, we should love her for 
what, as a new and youthful country, she has in so 
short time accomplished for the welfare of mankind. 
Persons, who from other climes have sought a home 
on these shores, in a phrase no more proverbial than 
it is correct, speak of their former residence as the 
old country. In this we may find the key-note of 
our subject. Nothing, perhaps, so much strikes a 
traveller in Great Britain, and over the whole Euro- 
pean continent, as how old every thing looks ; that is, 
how long the experiment of human progress and 
perfectibility has been going on. Our country is the 
youngest of the great mother-lands of the globe. 
Newly married is she to the civilization of the race. 
But, for what she has achieved for the general bene- 
fit, which land of them all — Assyria, Egypt, Persia, 
Greece, Rome, or any modern stock — is more worthy 
the attachment of its offspring ? I admit a balance of 
advantages and disadvantages between the newness 
of a country and its oldness ; for to claim every 
thing for ourselves is but ridiculous absurdity ; and 
those compatriots of ours, who sometimes make such 
a pretence, are like the Scotch citizen I met with on 
my journey, who, though an educated man, was so 
prejudiced, I could not convince him that certain 
masterpieces of genius in painting, which I had 
seen in continental galleries, were superior to some 
obscure pictures by a British artist ; or like the Hol- 
lander, who, when I eulogized the many fine pro- 
ductions of the Dutch pencil, replied, " Yes : we 



276 COUNTRY. 

have had all the great artists, except a few Italians." 
Ah ! we may be, as is charged, a vain race this side 
the water ; but, after all, not the only vain race on 
the earth. 

Young as we are, let us admit we may, in many 
things, be surpassed by some of the nations on this 
aged globe. It is difficult, however, for one, native 
here and never abroad, to realize how old the world 
is, — every thing about him is so fresh, and significant 
of progress and recent enterprise. In other lands 
he is carried back, — travelling on the line of time 
as well as space, — till even the ancient names of the 
Scripture chronology have a more vivid meaning as 
he traces for himself branch after branch of the hu- 
man, genealogical tree. Gazing long at monuments, 
dim epitaphs, half-effaced inscriptions, moss-grown 
walls, and ruined towers, the features are revealed of 
the longevity of mankind ; and he feels, as never 
here, that he is walking over the ashes of buried 
generations. The " earth sounds hollow to his 
tread." That Eastern side of the globe appears a 
vast sepulchre ,* while the Western, in relation to it, 
is an immense cradle. In many places, accordingly, 
decrepitude, beyond any sign of flourishing, is in the 
whole figure of that foreign existence. Often decay 
is the prevailing aspect of the scene ; not decay in 
the fields and forests, but of institutions and em- 
pires, to which Nature herself looks young. Then, 
to the eye of imagination glancing hitherward, this 
region of the setting sun in heaven seems, in vision, 
the region of the rising sun of humanity, as if it 



COUNTRY. £77 

were reserved by God so long, that in due time, 
when the advance of his children there should stop 
or be retarded or clogged, it might be here the 
theatre of a new experiment ; for, when God tries 
experiments, he takes the whole world for his room, 
to carry forward still further the interests of his 
earthly family ; to increase their outward fortunes ; 
and, above all, promote the great principles of free- 
dom and religion. 

The Old "World, indeed, like an old man who has 
steadily through life been pursuing his business, is 
rich in many respects in which the New World is 
poor ; for, when we came, we left our property behind 
us ! Verily, it has a history which, to ours, is like 
an endless vista of crowded centuries to the short 
nursery -tale of a growing boy. In truth, by none 
of the soaring and sublime proportions of the ma- 
terial world, which the traveller commonly talks of, 
was my spirit so thrilled as when standing in some 
of the public halls of England, France, and Ger- 
many, amid the visible reminiscences of the past, 
and letting the fancy with the sight run over the 
long record of glory and shame, whose numberless 
tokens were, in expressive registers of substantial 
relics, all around displayed, — signals of deeds of 
daring and courageous defence mixed with proofs of 
conquest and plunder ; rows of kings, sculptured or 
painted, through which the sceptre of authority had 
passed, dropping successively from the dead hand to 
the living one, while imperial souls, with plebeian, 
went to the just account ; heavy suits of armor, per- 

24 



278 COUNTRY. 

foratecl or dinted with blade or ball, as their wearers, 
now ashes, bore them into the deadly fray ; the linen 
shirts through which heroes, battling for the truth, 
as they saw it, had been pierced, with the blood- 
stain still on the white cloth, — perhaps the robe of 
some woman, nerved by inspirations caught from 
heaven to maintain her country's cause, and purely 
laying down her body among the vulgar heap of the 
slain ; or, like Joan of Arc, leaving in embers, at 
the foot of the stake, the limbs that had moved only 
in the service of God and her native land ; with 
manifold, more than I can enumerate, trophies of 
success, pictures of struggle, gains of humanity on 
cruel, arbitrary power, reaching back age after age 
into almost fabulous seons of antiquity, and spread- 
ing a table to which the whole nation could come 
and feast on the proud recollections of the past. 

History represented in, and narrated by, art : from 
these two great geniuses comes, in general, the grand 
impression received in the Old World ; while it is 
rather the brilliance of present achievement and of 
ardent hope which characterizes our new population. 
There it is beauty standing sentinel over action, or 
reverence embalming performance ; here it is strength 
and zeal still working out their imperfect aims, and 
somewhat roughly and rashly chasing after what is 
yet to be celebrated in the annals of many years to 
come. There it is a frequently outworn, here a vir- 
gin, soil. There the very children seem old when 
they are born, with the heritage of centuries in their 
manners and looks ; here the old are often young, 



COUNTRY. 279 

with eager hands and speculative faces, as if they 
had still somehow to make their fortunes before they 
die. There a city seems to have grown up taller 
and taller, till it is hoary with time, and stooping a 
little towards the ground : to the returning traveller, 
the town here seems cut off at the top, or lately 
sprouting from the earth. But that we should have 
done so much so quickly for the subduing of the 
earth, and for the liberty and happiness of its inhabi- 
tants, is, I repeat, the one comprehensive title of our 
country to love and renown. 

Yet even pious affection will not be blind to those 
drawbacks upon our repute which fanaticism may 
magnify. It is kind to a nation, as to an individual, 
to point out its defects for its own good ; and our 
defects border upon our virtues. This is truly the 
New World, and that the Old j and, correspondently 
in the analogy, this is the fast country, and others are 
relatively slow. It is a singular illustration of the 
speed of our settlement, that virtually one language 
is spoken all over our vast territory ; while, from 
ancient roots, several distinct dialects still prevail 
within the narrow space of Great Britain alone, — 
the English tongue having come, strangely enough, 
to be better spoken here than in England itself. 

But there are dangers and sins incident to youth 
and swiftness. In how many things are we too fast ! 
and our fastness is our iniquity and disgrace. Our 
reckless and perilous locomotion in this country, 
bad enough in itself, is but an emblem of our un- 
righteous haste in things of more concern than a 



£80 COUNTRY. 

journey. One traverses the deep, and rolls in every 
kind of vehicle over many lands, down hills terrifi- 
cally steep, through gorges that, to the approach, 
look impenetrably narrow, and along edges of preci- 
pitous hills or unfathomed gulfs ; or he sails in a 
hundred boats over rivers and lakes in perfect safety 
to himself and the tens of thousands of all his com- 
panions ; and then he comes home to find, in the 
first newspaper he takes up, accounts of railroad ac- 
cidents, steamboat explosions, runaway horses, and 
overturned carriages, with the long list of accidents, 
severely painful or awfully fatal ; till it seems to 
him, that, with all the dark plots abounding in de- 
spotic countries, there is one many-jointed, overt, 
and shameless conspiracy against human life, which 
is peculiar to his own. 

As this external haste among us is a representative 
fact, indicative of all our jeopardy, it may not be 
even morally useless to remark the literal fact, that, 
beside the double-guard upon his axle, which the 
foreign driver uses, of brake and chain, often, more- 
over, when you are coming to but a gentle descent, 
an iron shoe, like that actually employed to lock the 
wheel, is distinctly painted upon a firm and high 
post by the roadside, visible from some distance, for 
a peculiar caution against rapidity there. In how 
many places might such a shoe, to lock the wheel, 
well be drawn and hung up, not only on our high- 
ways of travel, but elsewhere too along the whole 
scope and course of our activity ! Might it not pro- 
perly be set up before the young man, liberally ex- 



COUNTRY. 281 

pending his means and health in pleasure, excess of 
wine and revelry, — burning out, as with a double 
flame, the candle of his bodily vigor, which God 
gave to be purely and prudently consumed ? Might 
it not fitly be elevated at the door of the speculative 
tradesman, launching forth all over the land beyond 
his basis of capital, and giving reins to his credit 
upon others and his interest at banks as far as he 
can drive it, till he and all his fellows are brought 
up by some crash and overturn, such as that from 
which multitudinous confused hosts, that might 
be painted like Pharaoh's army emerging from the 
Red Sea, have but lately been striving to extricate 
their bruised or broken wheels ? Might it not pro- 
perly be observed by the many stewards and trustees, 
who, led into temptation by being carelessly watched 
and miserably unchecked, pervert to their own gain 
or luxury the funds they hold for others, and as- 
tound the community with defalcations, for which 
they are not alone, though so terribly, to blame ? 
Might it not even be kept in sight by the extrava- 
gant woman or spendthrift girl, who, in silk and 
velvet and ornaments of jewels and gold, must 
clothe herself beforehand in her husband's or father's 
possible gains, or so invest the acquired property that 
might be devoted to a nobler end ? Might it not 
beneficially be raised in full view of our whole po- 
pulation, accused as money-loving, but — though 
there be a class of misers — wasteful far more ? If 
in a forward land, where the young are often dis- 
respectful and the wisdom of age unhonored, any 
24* 



282 COUNTRY. 

could thus be led in the course of modesty and dis- 
cretion, I should not regard as useless the journey 
that gave me one illustration so far-fetched from the 
mountains whose rivers empty into Oriental seas. 
Nay, might not some of the philanthropists and reli- 
gionists themselves, in their moral impatience to exe- 
cute immediately their plans, imitating the general 
foolish hurry of their countrymen, remember the 
homely imported symbol ? But yet, can their coun- 
trymen, hasty in so many other ways, blame them 
for taking example and trying to be a little hasty in 
the noble way of doing good ? Ah ! is it not a sig- 
nificant fact, that the driver in our country, instead 
of holding back his wheel on the inclined plane, 
races down one hill for a purchase to win, easier and 
quicker, as he hopes, if not overset on the way, the 
top of the other? So we rush in trade, expense, 
enterprises of mines and roads and mills, in our am- 
bition, conquest, physical aggrandizement ; but, alas ! 
it was never, in the history of the world, with any 
such boyish rush that intellectual or moral greatness, 
which is alone dear in the eye of Heaven, was 
reached. For the present, must it not be admitted, 
that, if we excel in quickness and invention, we pay 
dear for this excellence, by falling short in thorough- 
ness and security ? In the French capital, if there 
be so much as a little staging for workmen raised on 
the wall of a house, officers are stationed to warn off 
every passer-by ; and all along the continental rail- 
ways stand men, with colored staves in their hands, 
to signify whether the onward passage is safe. How 



COUNTRY. 283 

much collision and destruction here would such an 
expedient have prevented ! Those colored staves, 
indeed, indicate a whole plan of regulations, car- 
ried out there, which, among us, might be thought 
superfluous. If many cars or coaches are forth, 
running with imprudent velocity on uncertainly 
cleared ways, there will, according to the doctrine of 
chances, be a large ratio of interferences and over- 
throws. Equally so it is in companies and expedi- 
tions of finance and business. Referring to these 
and similar things, — as I talked with an American 
revisiting his home after a foreign residence of some 
years, — I said, " Such is the price for the invaluable 
boon of our freedom ! " " Ah ! " replied the emigrant 
from America to Europe, "there is more freedom 
here than for some of us is quite convenient ! I 
prefer, for my part, to live in the despotic country ! " 
Spite of the sad abatement, thank God, it is the dis- 
position of very few of our people to agree in this 
sentiment ; and liberty — pervading, representative 
liberty — is so the peculiar, romantic glory of our 
land over all beside, that millions in other territories, 
with desire unspeakable and " groanings that cannot 
be uttered," long to participate it. " Whither go 
you from hence ? " asked of me a bent, gray -headed 
Austrian keeper of the inn-door, near the borders of 
Bavaria. "To America," I replied. "I en-vy 
you!" — thus, in his broken speech, emphasizing 
the English word, — was the brief, decisive rejoin- 
der. Ah ! if liberty were the universal lot here in 
our fair domain, if we had worth and moral power 



284 COUNTRY. 

enough for that, the tribute could be accepted in a 
joy dashed with no compunction. But I should not 
be an honest reporter, if I did not declare that 
everywhere throughout Europe our American sla- 
very is regarded as our inconsistency and blot. 
Nevertheless, with our miserable and depressing 
slavery, I must as honestly affirm, I see not how 
an impartial observer of the world can behold our 
country's stand on the scale of character as, on the 
whole, below that of any other. The essence, the 
sin, of slaveholding itself, is in one man's using 
another as his instrument, the tool of his pleasure ; a 
thing, and not a person; an article of merchandise, 
instead of an inalienable property. It is a melan- 
choly truth, that, of this very same using, in Eng- 
land, in France, in Austria, and Russia, there is as 
much, to say the least, as here. Only it is our spe- 
cial shame, as we must confess ; because it is the vio- 
lation of our standard, and a virtual recanting of all 
the principles and professions of freedom that lie at 
the basis of our government. The best that can be 
said for our spiritual health in the matter, is, that we 
are all, in one way or another, so sore about it ! 
"What," said to me, with coaxing good-nature, a 
British fellow-traveller, — " what do you think now 
of your slavery ? " < < Think of it ? " I answered. " I 
think it is our reproach and transgression, the great 
evil of our land, the disease of our body politic. 
The body politic has diseases like the body physical. 
This is ours ; a very bad one ; there could scarce be 
a worse. And let me tell you, that we Americans 



COUNTRY. 285 

do not resent your reproachful referring to the dis- 
eases of our body politic, save when you forget that 
your body politic has diseases too." He was silent ; 
[ was silent : we both had cause. Would we might 
ill be silent, if so we would repent ! 

We talk much of our great country. It can 
never be the extent and extension of our soil, but 
only the goodness and generosity of the people, that 
can make the country truly great. One saintly 
soul, whom we call Son of God, walked, eighteen 
centuries since, over the coasts of Judea ; and it is 
called the Holy Land to this day. The land was no 
holier than any other, west or east. He was holy 
that passed over it, and perfumed it with his sanc- 
tity. And only when this land, far and near, is trod- 
den by his faithful disciples, can its glory exceed 
that of the elder nations of the earth, and patriot- 
ism the warmest be a sentiment at which justice 
can take no offence, nor humanity have any shame ; 
for it will be identical with themselves. 

If, in fine, reviewing the whole matter with a 
good citizen's conscience, one should desire to see 
the dangerous tendencies of his own American coun- 
try, their most vivid recapitulation might be made 
under a figure suggested by the thought, which has 
marked the whole line of our comparison, of our 
national youth. That figure is not seldom, in these 
days, presented in the cant phrase of Young Ameri- 
ca, which, though spoken in a light and laughing 
way, has a sober meaning, demanding our best re- 
flections. 



286 COUNTRY. 

The artist has tried to express with his pencil 
what is signified by Young America ; drawing the 
portrait of a boy, not without some pretensions to 
beauty, bright, vigorous, and promising in his ap- 
pearance, but with such pride and self-will in his 
compressed lips, such presumption in his wide-open, 
staring eyes, such forwardness in his whole aspect, 
vanity in his dress, and such a hint or likelihood of 
impertinence in what he is about to say or do ; for, 
though the hands are not given, you cannot finish 
the figure in your imagination without fancying 
them rudely clinched ; that you gaze at the delinea- 
tion with a very qualified and dubious pleasure. 
Truly, we should have occasion, all of us, young or 
old, for lamentation, if such were the universal 
character of the youth of our country ; for well 
some one has said, " If you would know the public 
opinion and action of the next age, inquire into the 
prevailing thoughts and tendencies of the young 
men of the present." 

Excellent and hopeful traits has Young America. 
But we should, for our wholesome admonition, seek 
what, involved in the meaning and very sound, as 
the ear catches it, of this phrase, is not well or 
praiseworthy in the prevailing temper of the whole 
social and political body of which we are part. 
There is a spirit of the times and of the country, 
which we are to welcome, follow, and profit by, 
where it is right ; and guard against, so far as it is 
injurious and wrong. The land we live in has my 
love and praise beyond any other land under the 



COUNTRY. 287 

sun ; but will the spirit of patriotism forgive me if 
I say that the artist's figure of Young America 
does not wholly misrepresent the American people ? 
"Young America! " Verily we are young, as com- 
pared with many countries, — Old England, France, 
Spain, Italy. Many a man among us is older than 
the nation as a distinct community. Less than four- 
score is not very aged for a nation, when, in other 
regions, the same species of arbitrary rule measures 
a space of thousands of years. But we have, in our 
juniority, certainly attained to an enormous growth. 
We present, on the mighty scale of a people and a 
continent, the phenomenon sometimes witnessed in 
the gigantic and amazing size of an individual in his 
early manhood. 

If we inquire, then, into the character and port of 
this power, — so monstrous in the morning and 
spring-time of its life, — must we not confess that, 
to some extent, it is boyish ? I am sorry this should 
be such a term of reproach, and sorry to use and 
apply it ; but does not the wilful, wanton, jealous, 
intrusive, disrespectful, and quarrelsome temper of 
an undisciplined and inexperienced youth dash and 
adulterate somewhat our finer elements of public 
justice, generosity, and dignity ? Is there no juve- 
nility, none of the hasty, defying, unmannerly, and 
intemperate tone, which makes the least pleasing 
characteristic to which the early period of life is 
liable, evident in our civil documents, legislative 
proceedings, and — in one state or another, under 
one administration or another — in our govermental 



288 COUNTRY. 

policy ? Are we a truly manly nation ? Look, any 
one who will, and see the indiscreetness, to say the 
least, sometimes of our functionaries, acting with 
our trust, commission, and authority ! See the dis- 
graceful personalities on our floors of debate through 
almost every capitol, from the chief one down, as 
though vulgar boys were calling each other names ! 
See abusive words, turning, on occasion, into angry 
blows ! See how, like a combative stripling, with 
his fists prepared for action in the street, we are, in 
one or another itching member of our great corpora- 
tion, ready for a general fight ; and have had to 
invent a barbarous word as a name for those who, 
but for the law's restraint, would, at any moment, 
rush forth to invade the territories, — in coveting 
which we violate one of the everlasting command- 
ments of God ! See within our own borders all 
law, human and divine, recently trampled down by 
brutal force, in defence of the disgraceful institution 
of slavery against the peaceful and legitimate exten- 
sion of freedom ! See, on the other hand, the heady 
and passionate quality, like a sour ferment or a 
humor in the blood, such as youth is subject to, in 
our very benevolence ! See the crudeness and ludi- 
crous mimicry of lordly ways, as though awkward 
clowns were playing at gentility, not yet excluded 
from what is called our best society ! See the facts 
of Christianity ridiculed by a blasphemous scepti- 
cism, as superficial in its philosophy as was ever a 
profane lad with a thoughtless oath on his lips ! See 
liberty itself interpreted as the right to do what we 



COUNTRY. 289 

please, — that seems to be our definition of liberty, 
— though, it be to make war, spy into our fellow- 
citizens' dwellings, or enslave our fellow-creatures' 
bodies and souls ! See whatever, current among us, 
betokens the faulty pattern and the erring side of 
the genius of Young America ! 

Young America has his trophies and achieve- 
ments ; but they are qualified with grievous abate- 
ments and great wants. He outsails his rival 
England in his yacht America ; but sometimes 
he goes to the bottom or the shore in his huge 
steamer ; while his rival sails safely on, and carries 
a hundred thousand souls unharmed across the sea. 
The character of a whole nation, — is it not repre- 
sented in the smallest things, even in a ship? 

Young America trades and makes a great deal of 
money ; but he is so fast and ambitious in making it, 
that the whole rolling mass and splendid carriage of 
his enterprise has been repeatedly overset with tre- 
mendous crash of common ruin ; and how many of us 
are there, who have not learned that Young America, 
in his hurry no doubt, uses a slyness and sharpness 
of bargain, which, to a true and sober vision, is not 
very distinguishable from dishonesty and deceit ! 
The boy, negotiating with his fellow, sometimes 
cheats in tops and marbles ; and Young America has 
default, false play, and repudiation in his blood. 

Young America builds ; he is a great architect ; 
but I cannot say that his houses do not oftener tum- 
ble down than houses do in other nations, though 
other nations usually build higher than he does, — 

25 



290 COUNTRY. 

if we will believe they do any thing better and 
stronger than we do. 

Young America makes his own way ; carves out, as 
we say, his own fortune ; but he lives high, and be- 
yond his means, and uses a magnificence of dress, 
ornament, and furniture, which he cannot well sup- 
port, and which often drives him to failure and the 
auction-block. Young America abjures, in theory, 
all aristocracy ; but, in his expenses and self-indul- 
gences, he not seldom imitates aristocrats, and even 
goes beyond their example, shamefully to his own 
harm, bettering their instruction. The peer, de- 
scended from a score of kings, may be heard re- 
marking that he cannot afford to do this or that ; but 
you never hear Young America make any such ad- 
mission. He would be mortified to have it thought 
he could not afford any thing. 

Yet Young America, — pardon me, shade of my 
country, my reluctant censure ! — with all his vanity 
and show ; with all his crowding among the strong, 
and all his shouldering of the weak ; with all his 
sins against inferior races, — as the African and 
Indian, — and all his avarice of new possessions, 
— Young America is a generous giver, an earnest 
learner, an ardent worshipper too, — such a giver, 
such a learner, such a worshipper, as nowhere else 
upon the globe can be found ; and, in the beauty of 
these characteristics, promising to be great and good 
as never nation yet was beneath the sun. Would to 
God that his good points might be strengthened, 
and his bad or doubtful ones reduced ! For Young 



COUNTRY. 291 

America must be Old America by and by ; and the 
dishonored, dreary, miserable old age of the sinner 
belongs to nations in this world as well as to indi- 
viduals. 

For ourselves and our children, for our commu- 
nity and our country, far as our strength may go, let 
us adopt and extend his virtues ; let us lament and 
extinguish his vices. To the utmost of our in- 
fluence, let us lead him to that true religion, of 
Christ in the divine gospel, which can alone cure 
every iniquity and confirm every elevated principle. 
Let this be the purpose of every man, father, elder, 
guardian, among us. Let it be the purpose, if pos- 
sible more cordial still, of perhaps every more in- 
fluential woman, — mother, sister, daughter, of our 
ruder sex. The portrait of Young America is 
sketched, not unwittingly, as a masculine shape. 
Let the gentler, more affectionate, and, what I have 
always found, more religious part of our humanity, 
that must share the character and fortunes of the 
whole, pour, of its naturally higher purity, more 
gracious modesty and ardent devotion, to refine, 
exalt, and save — save for the world, for human 
weal — this our so mingled, endangered, and most 
momentous American life. 



MANKIND. 



2a 



Nature, with thy beauty rare ! 
human nature ! — form more fair 
Than earth or sun, than sea or sky, 
Yet blasted with depravity. 
Thanks for some purer blossoms yet, 
Upon thy boughs in glory set, 
Intrinsic grace and worth to prove ; 
For genius thanks, and thanks for love, 
Which flower from thy rugged stem 
Brighter than sovereign's diadem ; 
And prophesy, with final fruit, 
Comely to make thy darkest root. 



MANKIND. 



Every traveller, I believe, is expected, as a matter 
of course, to have the lowest opinion of human 
nature. Certainly no theological theory of the 
depravity of mankind has ever come up to the prac- 
tical contempt which a certain class of worldly-wise 
experts in observation entertain for mankind. The 
scorner of his race is admitted to testify and tell all 
the stories of base and wicked doings which he has 
gathered on his way ; but, if a man bear different 
witness, it is at once by many presumed that he has 
been imposed upon. Only a short-sighted and cre- 
dulous person, it is intimated, can render a favorable 
judgment, in this inquest, upon his fellow-creatures. 
Especially if it happen to be a member of a parti- 
cular religious profession who renders a merciful 
verdict, the cry is at once raised, " What does he 
know about human nature ? He does not even sus- 
pect what is going on in the world, and is ignorant 
as a child of things occurring every day in the street 
before his eyes. People appear only in their Sun- 
day-dress to him : how should he see the thoughts 



296 MANKIND. 

and conduct that make their ordinary wear ? He 
walks in a complete mist and delusion: to speak 
vulgarly, dust is thrown in his eyes, and anybody 
can deceive him." 

But a man who has journeyed unprofessionally, in 
many lands, with all classes, in all vehicles, in the 
highest with nobles, and with laborers and peasants 
in the lowest, — for, in aristocratic regions, there are 
three or four grades at your service, — among deck 
passengers and cabin ones, himself, without courier 
or servant, doing with agents and publicans all the 
business and necessary talk of a travelling party; 
walking with those that walked, and riding with 
those that rode ; dealing with deep-voiced, sincere 
Britons ; plausible and polite French ; coarser-man- 
nered but warmer-hearted Germans ; and supple 
Italians, so long schooled to cunning by a double 
ecclesiastic and political tyranny : such a man may 
have some right to be introduced upon the stand. 
He may claim to know something about his fellow- 
creatures in their dispositions and transactions ; in 
their worldly conduct ; and their week-day clothing, 
be it of velvet or serge. 

" Well," exclaims my cold sceptic or shrewd mis- 
anthropist, "what can he bring but the traveller's 
proverbial testimony about the tricks he has been 
the victim of, — overcharges in the bill ; circumven- 
tions by money-changers and financiers ; deceptions 
as to routes and distances and objects of interest ; 
of having had to go from admiration of the glories of 
the world to scold the impositions of the driver ; of 



MANKIND. 297 

being cheated in the terms of the bargain ; misled as 
to the beauties of the way ; disappointed in the times 
of arrival ; and, in short, involved in a universal con- 
spiracy against his solitary enjoyment and advan- 
tage?" 

Now, I am not going to pretend there is but one 
side in this matter, or no color at all for such exag- 
geration. There is much in the eye, as well as in 
the thing, to affect the judgment. I have known 
travellers abroad who took just this dark view, 
always passed a harsh sentence, or suspected a fraud- 
ulent plan, and disputed the honesty of that very 
landlord or conductor with whom other persons, in 
the same circumstances, were quite content. But I 
must say in regard to such, that, though an indi- 
vidual complainer may speak from a noble sensi- 
tiveness to the moral tone and quality of human life, 
yet I think I have noticed that the censorious in 
general had not themselves the best of tempers or 
the most generous minds, and so were not compe- 
tent to a fair and comprehensive decision. " I have 
not," it was remarked to one, " found the total corrup- 
tion yet." " You will, if you go far enough," was 
the earnest and bitter reply. " You will not carry that 
article long without losing it," said a man, referring 
to something exposed to be stolen ; as though the thief 
were always near by, as certainly he is often not 
very far off. But I did carry it round to the other 
side of the world. 

Doubtless there are many wrong and mean trans- 
actions which the traveller has to endure ; and, alas ! 



298 MANKIND. 

he is sometimes himself more afflicted by an error 
in his bill than by one in his life. But he 'may 
safely engage to remember far more of kindly ar- 
rangements and equitable affairs. Indeed, I find my 
first argument in a phrase in our familiar speech, 
whose meaning I first fully learned from converse with 
the world. We say, a common humanity, if nothing 
else, might induce one to avoid certain actions or 
perform others. Such phrases always savor of truth 
and reality. There is such a thing as a common 
humanity; that is, a spirit, a mode of behavior, 
among men in general, not sublime indeed, but in- 
teresting and worthy. It is a virtue, confessedly 
such ; and, for my part, more than any thing else I 
saw this virtue of common humanity. Threading 
my lonely path through the masses of great cities, 
how numberless the civil remarks made to me ; 
friendly replies given ; perfect strangers, who in Lon- 
don and Paris, at Antwerp and Rotterdam, and in 
many places, that went out of their way to guide me, 
or drew careful descriptions of the course I was to 
take, aiding me without reward ; or when the thanks 
I returned was the only pay they would have 
accepted ! My reader would become impatient if I 
were to detail the disinterested advice I received 
from chance companions, in long conversations, as to 
the best methods of living or places of abiding in 
distant regions, scenes in nature to visit, works of 
art to examine ; when my counsellors might never 
see me again, and had no motive but this common 
humanity to prompt them. There is no pleasant 



MANKIND. 299 

varnish, no boasted refinement, worth so much as 
this. Indeed, the general good-humor of intercourse 
among those accidentally thrown together ; mutually 
helpful services freely rendered ; pleasant words ; 
affectionate, religious salutations heard along road 
and river ; unaffected cordialities of kinsfolk and 
friends, pointing back to happy homes, — did not, to 
me, prove man the brute or demon which by bigots 
and sceptics — who are more akin to each other 
than we may fancy — he has been called. 

There are certainly great differences of behavior, 
arising from diverse constitutions, both intellectual 
and moral, in men as you meet them. Nothing is 
grosser than the doctrine which puts human nature 
indiscriminately into one piece, and clothes it in uni- 
form, when there are as many natures as creatures. 
But, from those who had but slender endowments and 
moved with awkward deportment, I have received 
such generous furtherance and patient instruction as 
would fain oblige the heart to glow, and the face 
blush with humble gratitude. I cannot, therefore, 
join the decriers of human nature in their sweeping 
censures, whether they be worldlings or theologians. 
I would rather, from my experience, echo that 
grandly ringing line of Peter, — who also was some- 
thing of a traveller in his day, — "Honor all men." 
Ah ! Peter himself did not begin with that feeling, 
but with Jewish scorn ; and the line which he wrote 
in his Epistle arose, I doubt not, from his own re- 
corded experience, wherein, upon his full-blown 
disdain of other nations, men in general, he saw the 



300 MANKIND. 

great sheet let down from heaven to earth, contain- 
ing all manner of four-footed beasts, wild beasts, 
creeping things, and fowls of the air, for him to eat, 
teaching him the folly of his previous Hebrew pre- 
judices about the Gentiles, — that is, all the rest of 
the world, — and admonishing him never after to 
esteem any man, of any nation, common or unclean, 
— a correspondence which, let me say in passing, is 
another of the many internal evidences of Chris- 
tianity. Ah! there is no dainty air, no grace of 
fashion, no conventional propriety, no horror of vul- 
garity, so precious as this common humanity. 

But, in addition, there is a reason for honoring all 
men in the greatness of individual characters, pro- 
duced by this tree of humanity, on which we, with 
the millions of our fellow-beings, grow. That mighty 
tree, like some trees in the vegetable kingdom, truly 
does not come into complete bearing at once. Only 
a multitude of leaves, slight and cheap expressions 
of its vitality, may for a while appear ; but at 
length, at intervals it may be of ages, appear its 
splendid flowering and its glorious fruit of moral 
grace and goodness, here and there, on a few of its 
branches. God did not cut it down because of this 
slow and late blossoming, and at first scanty ripen- 
ing ; but, as with the fig-tree in the parable, he 
tended and cherished it the more ; till at last the 
holy and divine product, once so rarely seen upon 
it, which it was yet intended and planted to bring 
forth, unfolded oftener and more abundantly on its 
boughs. Though the tree is yet backward in many 



MANKIND. 301 

a part hereafter to be covered with this spiritual 
glory, we live in the day of its finer flourishing ; 
and I should be thankless and recreant if I did not 
testify, that my most delightful recollections of the 
foreign excursion which carried me to clamber so 
far among its foliage — sometimes finding fruit, 
sometimes not — are of extraordinary specimens of 
human excellence I was permitted to behold. They 
are of noble men, who cheered the pilgrim when 
away from his friends, conferred favors upon him he 
had no power to return, and brought him under ob- 
ligations they would not suffer him to cancel, yet 
which were lightened of all disagreeable weight by 
its being evident they would bring anybody and 
everybody under the same. What else meant those 
monuments of their generosity which I saw, in so 
many asylums and hospitals, on my way ? I did 
not rejoice in them especially for what they did for 
me, but for what they were in themselves ; in fact, 
I did not give them personally the entire credit even 
of their own worth. After all, did they not grow 
on the tree ? They were samples of the stock from 
which they sprouted. The farmer does not take 
green or decaying fruit, or a withered or smutty 
kernel, for a sample of his orchard or his wheat. 
They boasted not, and I boast them not ; because 
they bore not the root, but the root them. The 
blood of Adam, through all the myriad streams of 
humanity, was in their veins. The whole tree was 
essential to their pre-eminence. The coarse trunk, 
the knotty limbs, the swell and rising of ages, lifted 

26 



302 MANKIND. 

them so high, and nursed the buds that were to open 
into the shape of their beautiful and nourishing 
souls. Only thank God for exemplifying, in all 
such instances, the capacities of mankind, for inspir- 
ing us with hope of seeing them multiplied without 
end, for kindling us with desire ourselves to reach 
up to their blessed maturity of manhood and woman- 
hood, and for moving us thus to honor all men who 
are vitally connected with these particular manifesta- 
tions. Honor the nature which, in every man, has 
the germ of such goodness. 

But human nature, from her Author, puts on 
another crown of honor in the genius which some 
of her offspring have displayed. I need not say a 
word to celebrate the incomparable claim of that 
peculiar gift we call genius. Every one who can 
read a book ; who can be charmed with the bright 
visions of poetry ; who, like Paul when he was 
caught up into the third heaven, can be transported 
into other worlds by the magic of invention, or 
thrilled in any way with the imagination of beauty 
or the eloquence of words, — will acknowledge for 
it his debt. But whence the genius we admire, and 
which our bosoms so dilate with ? It is, we say, an 
inspiration of God ; but it is derived to the favored 
mortal, whom it kindles, through the common facul- 
ties of human nature, only in him refined and 
heightened. The man of genius is no exclusive 
creature, — a being of another order, — as is some- 
times supposed. He is but the child of the race; 
he is the flower of the family. The richest blood 



MANKIND. 303 

of Adam, flowing from every quarter, where, like 
wine in store from the choicest vintages, it has been 
most exalted, has mingled a thousand mazy cur- 
rents, of diverse qualities of value, in the veins of 
the chosen one ; as if the great Father meant in him 
to show to what the powers of his human children 
are equal, in discovering the treasures of his creation, 
and unveiling the attributes of his mind. But this 
genius is made out of the stuff we are all made of, 
only carried up into greater force and purity. It is 
the porcelain of our common clay. Like John the 
Baptist's robe of camel's hair, we wear the cheap 
and shaggy coat, whose finer threads compose its in- 
calculable cost. Be not discouraged by the transcen- 
dent abilities of the man of splendid intellect. He 
is but your brother ; and what he is you may some- 
time become ; yea, far exceed. Teacher of youth ! 
gladly toil to wake up and patiently train the ener- 
gies of your pupil's mind : there is that within him 
which will hereafter and finally outstrip Homer and 
Milton. Real philanthropist ! be not so scornful 
with any, but honor in all men the capacities which, 
for the moment, so brilliantly culminate in some. 

Such the thoughts with which, in memory, I still 
hover over the spots I visited, consecrated by the 
death of those whose names and writings made their 
birthplaces and abodes illustrious, and whose genius 
liveth evermore. We fancy there must be some ex- 
ceeding attraction, some unrivalled splendor, in the 
native soil and local habitation of such persons ; but 
they lived on the common earth, as well as shared the 



304 MANKIND. 

common nature of men. When I trod the grounds 
of that great instructor and pure-hearted amuser of 
the world, — and, in a world of so much sadness, it is 
something even innocently to amuse, — of Walter 
Scott I mean, — the rumor of a tale ascribed to 
whom affects us more than the authentic work of 
another man, — wondering, I asked myself, " Is 
this the outward origin of those matchless tales, 
of the lyric and historic pen, which have so bound 
young and old in their benignant spell, soothed 
so much care, whiled away so many hours else 
of weariness and pain, and turned the fancy of 
millions into a stage, whereon such a host of 
characters, before unknown, have marched and con- 
versed together, as it were alive, in their own form 
and costume ? Are these, that I see, the actual hills 
he celebrated ? and those yonder the woods and 
brooks ? and what I sailed over yesterday the lochs ? 
What explanation do they vouchsafe of the mystery 
of his mind, so populous with all incidents repre- 
senting all types of human disposition ? " The river 
Tweed flows muddy in the hollow behind his house, 
but can tell me nothing. " Eildon's triple-height " 
soars there into the sky, but shows not among all 
its rills the channel of his inspiration. Farther away 
rise the summits, whereon some of his heroes halted 
in their march ; but they shrink into insignificance 
as you gaze at them, so much more figure do they 
make in the mirror of his imagination than actually 
on the earthy globe. Nor can all the famous curio- 
sities — guns and spears and figured stones, rem- 



MANKIND. 305 

nants of barbarian and classic glory — that hang 
about the walls of his dwelling, which is now a 
shrine, solve this problem of intellectual mastery. I 
stood delighted, yet disappointed and sad. It was 
the satisfaction of funeral respect. Only one touch- 
ing ray of light falls graciously from the staircase 
which he constructed from his study to his chamber, 
so that he might rise to his work and retire from it, 
and, late or early, light or quench his own fire, with- 
out disturbing the family by passing through any 
other room. All that can be said is, " Oh ! he is our 
man, our representative, — one of the elder-born in 
our household; and we can love and admire him 
because we are his kindred." 

So with that prodigy, more amazing, whom we 
call Shakspeare, well regarded in any treatment of 
that human nature, of which he, of all men, was al- 
most alone ordained preacher and priest, — priest of 
man, not priest of God. The house he saw the 
light in still stands ; the neighboring church holds 
his dust ; the Avon flows by softly as ever ; but 
none like him is born there where countless pilgrims 
scratch, as if for preservation, the names that melt 
like bubbles into the sea of his immortality. There 
is no resurrection under the sun of the poet from his 
tomb. Nobody beholds the stream, or gazes on the 
sky, or greets the rising day, as he beheld and gazed 
and greeted. But we can all sympathize in his 
mood and appreciate his wisdom, and inwardly feel 
that his supremacy is, nevertheless, but the expansion 
of our nature 

26* 



306 MANKIND. 

Oh! this genius is not a plant from the ground, 
but a bestowment of God in the noblest blossoming 
of the human soul. "When we honor it, we honor 
all men whose several traits, through the long line 
of existence, have contributed to its ultimate inesti- 
mable production. It is customary with many to 
trace back their relations far as they can, and map 
them out upon a genealogical table. If we were 
likewise to follow the pedigree of genius, we might 
find it running into the widest variety of sources, 
out of which it sucks its life and nutriment, — from 
the laborer in the field, and the watcher in his obser- 
vatory ; from sailors over the deep, and mountaineers 
upon the crags ; from prisoners in dungeons, and 
kings on their thrones ; from peaceful shepherds, and 
soldiers under arms ; from beggars and benefactors, 
strange kinsfolk associated, to be all, as they may 
well, ancestry of one person ; yet from all these 
might we see the actual currents gushing which mix 
in its circulations. It is genius, because it is the as- 
sembling and raising into more intense and potent 
action of the manifold original elements of human 
nature, — elements scattered remotely or coming 
out singly here and there, but elements gathered for 
once, and flaming together for the renown of man- 
kind in the glory of God. There is respect for the 
delegate, but for his constituency greater. I honor 
the man, the chief; but I honor all men more. He 
is borne on their shoulders. 

But, in fine, there is something loftier in this 
world than genius itself; and that is martyrdom, self- 



MANKIND. 307 

sacrifice unto death, for human welfare. This also 
I adduce for the honor of human nature. I admit 
the deep shames and terrible iniquities by which that 
nature has been discredited and abused; but why- 
are they black but because there is an honorable 
nature beneath them ? Yet some may exclaim, 
" Martyrdom a glorious thing for mankind ! Why, 
then, is it that the martyr cannot live ? Wherefore 
has he expired in agony, but that his fellow-men 
were set in malignant, unappeasable wickedness 
against him ? " Ah ! that is because at the time, as 
the great Martyr said, " they know not what they 
do." Afterwards they adopt him, whom they hated 
and slew, into their highest honor and love. Yes, 
not a martyr was ever lost. The heart of man re- 
claims all the holy suffering confessors of God, and, 
by its reclamation and admiring affection, demon- 
strates its own capacity for self-sacrifice. 

I stopped upon the bridge at Prague, over the 
river Moldau, where, we are told, a Romish priest, 
nearly five centuries ago, was plunged into the 
stream, by order of the Bohemian king, because he 
refused to divulge what had been confided to him 
by the queen under the seal of confession. To the 
loving eyes that looked after him, flames appeared to 
flicker above the place in the water where his body 
lay ; and upon the parapet are stamped five stars, en- 
closing a cross, in imitation of those flames, and sug- 
gestive of eternal glories for the ascending spirit. 
The memory of the poor priest, faithful to his vow, 
could not perish. His soul was taken out of its 



308 MANKIND. 

humility of station, to be, more than three centuries 
after, sainted and canonized. The recovered body, 
once clad in sackcloth, was incased in a gorgeous 
shrine, and placed in the cathedral; while simple 
John Nepomuk, who cared not so much for his flesh 
as for his vow, became, in all Catholic countries, the 
patron of bridges ; he who could not keep himself 
from being thrown over one in utter shame and mor- 
tal agony ! No : the humble martyr was not wholly 
cast away ; he did not drop out of the respect of 
his kind. No king threatens him now ; but many 
a royal head bows at the place of his execution, and 
travellers from all the world reverently pause to gaze 
at the spot where the willing victim sank ; while the 
rapid current, as it rolls and sweeps one's imagina- 
tion along its tide to the sea, seems to be bearing his 
fame upon its bosom for ever and ever. 

So Borromeo is persecuted to death by the accusa- 
tions of foes and the attacks of government. But, 
at Arona, his face, in a colossal statue of bronze, 
from a height of more than a hundred feet, shines, 
year after year, to unnumbered beholders, an image 
of all sweetness and lowliness, — for that is the im- 
pression, — in the air. But why, in the noble army 
of martyrs, go further ? Does the fate of the great 
Martyr himself, and Author of our salvation, show, 
to the honor of human nature, no earthly recogni- 
tion and human appreciation of his unapproached 
purity ? One sign, of a legion, let me select, in 
transcribing a pencilled line from a picture of the 
crucifixion in a museum in the Netherlands. On 



MANKIND. 309 

a rock, which the artist has painted beneath the 
bloody tree, his brush has left these words : " That 
the ashes of his father might rest lightly, Vandyke 
rolled this stone to the foot of the cross." I say 
nothing of the particular doctrinal faith here implied : 
I only ask, if, to the honor of human nature, all 
might not show, for live or buried parents, as much 
feeling of filial piety blended with devotion to the 
Saviour of the world. 

To that great interrogatory about mankind, which 
we search into our hearts and travel through the 
world to answer, such, then, is one poor pilgrim's 
hint of a reply. How many and various are the 
answers to this interrogatory, he is well aware. 
What is humanity ? It is a depraved nature ,• it is 
an undeveloped germ ; it is a material clod ; it is a 
poor form of clay, capable of being illuminated by 
immortal splendor ; it is a cradle of all-heavenly 
affections ; it is a hiding-place, in which it is won- 
derful to see what ugly demons can lie down. Such 
are some of the contradictory decisions made by 
theologians and philosophers and practical men. 
The human creature is a great paradox, — is high 
and low, good and bad, to observers from different 
points of view, at one time. Every thing virtuous 
or sinful is true of him. It is thought that those 
who have close and large converse with human 
beings must agree in the same opinion, and that an 
ill one, of their race. The romance of idealists and 
the enthusiasm of children, about human nature, are 
supposed to be necessarily scattered to the winds 



310 MANKIND. 

while the pilgrim passes on his way. As, not sel- 
dom, the imagination one has had of a famous city 
or scene in nature is utterly dispersed by the first 
sight of the object ; so, it is believed, by travel will 
be broken up every high or favorable theory of our 
poor humanity. Human nature, it must be con- 
fessed, does not commonly appear to rise much in a 
hotel or a steamboat. When it is hunting after its 
convenience, satisfying its animal wants, or engaged 
in transactions of mere trade, it cannot be seen in 
the most favorable light. But all the bad lights in 
which it may be surveyed cannot wholly distort or 
obscure that glory of its capacities and better aspi- 
rations, which ever struggles with the gloom of its 
meaner propensities, its deceitful windings, and 
selfish plans. The tribe of little observers, like that 
of gloomy theorists, may denounce mankind; but 
the true cosmopolite will be no sceptic about the 
soul, or hater of his race. For one, I thank God 
that experience of travel, wide conversation, and 
forced dealing in finance, have only confirmed my 
thoughts, while they make my testimony in order. 
I thank God that I have not lost my good opinion 
of my fellow-creatures by mixing with them ; but 
found them, with all their faults and follies, only 
becoming dearer to my heart. 

Let me, however, own the strong color of reason- 
ableness in a darker view. When the actual facts of 
human life are compared with the ideal of a poet's 
imagination, the demand of a spiritualist's conscience, 
or the longing of a Christian's hope, how low and 



MANKIND. 311 

wretched indeed human nature looks ! It is only 
when our existence is regarded as a process and pro- 
gression, both whose beginning and end are out of 
sight, and we can believe in an advance already im- 
mense, and tending to immensity inconceivable, that 
our heart is reassured. According as one looks at 
his nature in its present and positive shape, or in its 
promise, will his view be graver or more cheerful ; 
nor is there a single part or feature of our complex 
being, which, considered in one or the other of these 
ways, might not be made alternately a ground of 
encouragement, or an argument for despair. 

May I therefore be permitted, in conclusion, to 
select from the broad field of my observation one 
more practical test ? It relates to a theme dear to all 
true manhood, and without which no treatment of 
this general subject can be at all complete : I mean 
the condition of woman. It will be within the 
memory of every intelligent person, that He, who 
must by all be considered as the greatest being ever 
clothed in flesh, moved his disciples even to marvel, 
because they found him talking with a woman ; this 
being, as we learn, one of the six things that would 
render a member of the then prevailing school of 
philosophers impure. What an improved state of 
thinking and practice since that time, among men 
simple and vulgar, as well as wise, this one statement 
proves ! But yet, how far we are from that perfect 
relation of the sexes which we desire, let one of the 
great movements of our own day plainly signify. 
How far from it we are, even in strong and enlight- 



312 MANKIND. 

ened nations, I can indeed myself bear witness. In 
this particular line of improvement, the very country 
— namely, our own — where is most complaint of 
woman's disabilities and degradation, certainly leads 
the world in efforts for her elevation and improve- 
ment. How well I still remember the painful shock 
I received from the first incident that decidedly 
fastened my attention in the streets of the great city 
of London ! The driver came to the door of the 
crowded omnibus, in which I was sitting, to ask if 
any one would exchange his seat and go to the top, 
to admit a woman. The gentlemen all shook their 
heads ; and one indignantly cried out, " No : not for 
the queen ! " The individual who left his place to 
let in the weary creature perhaps owed purely to 
his Americanism the trifling kindness which he 
alone, of all the company, was willing to show ; if 
indeed he were not, as he fancied at the time, for his 
supposed simplicity, the object of some little con- 
tempt. It would of course violate justice, as much 
as logic, to argue from single circumstances to gene- 
ral conclusions. There is doubtless great honor for 
woman in what we call, with a figure drawn from 
woman's own glory, our motherland ; and perhaps 
such a fact as I have mentioned might be paralleled 
among ourselves ; but I do not think the coolness of 
the refusal, the scornful pride of the exclusion, the 
tone of voice, or look of the countenance, could by 
any of our citizens possibly have been equalled. 
Our common feeling towards woman would prevent 
it. On the continent we saw women engaged, as 



MANKIND. 313 

though it were their familiar work, in offices that, in 
the Western world, would fall to them nowhere but 
on the outskirts of civilization, or under the tyranni- 
cal rule of some one who is less a man than a barba- 
rian or a brute. As we passed along through South- 
ern Germany, we observed females, of reverend as 
well as youthful years, not only employed in the 
hardest labor of the fields, but at work with an 
agricultural fork upon the heap of ordure ; and 
once actually tackled into the cart, to draw it as 
would a beast. Nothing, certainly, like this Aus- 
trian cruelty did we see in Great Britain ; although 
I confess to feeling a strange mixture in my mind 
of sadness and amusement, as, on the river Ouse, I 
noticed a woman, with all the calm and knowing 
look of the most experienced mariner, steering a 
little sloop of merchandise down the tide. 

It is sometimes, by the professed advocates of wo- 
man's rights, said that a woman may do all that a 
man may ; but, to him who sees what men do in 
this world, this is a two-edged maxim. Thanks to God 
and the tenderness of the human heart that woman 
in our day is commonly excused from doing many 
things that are thought to become a man ; that she 
is not called to fight, or walk on the midnight patrol, 
or mingle in the angry conflicts of the bar and the 
caucus ; but is kept " secretly in a pavilion from the 
strife of tongues," and from all the corrupt en- 
counters of the open world. For a principle, let us 
rather say that woman may do all she can do, without 
ceasing to be a woman, in that peculiar glory of her 

27 



314 MANKIND. 

distinct nature, of all grace and loveliness, with 
which the Maker has clothed her, not for time only, 
but for immortality. I will maintain, he is not a 
true man who has never seen the very flower, to his 
eyes, of humanity in the shape of a woman, and 
who does not believe that flower will for ever, in 
heavenly regions, bloom with a special beauty not 
belonging to the other harmoniously related, manly 
nature ; whether, by special, outward revelations, 
such a truth be hinted at in the different celestial 
orders of seraphim and cherubim, or not. 

To every traveller, at home or abroad, one thing is 
clear, — that we have got men enough already. We 
do not want any more, a greater proportion, of them 
on earth. We do not want any of our sisters to un- 
sex themselves, and come over to our rude ranks ; 
for we love them better and more purely than we do 
ourselves or one another. Let them do every thing 
that is possible, without ceasing to realize the true 
type of womanhood. Let them teach and train the 
young ; sing inspired songs, as so many of them 
vanquish almost all men in doing ; be eloquent, if 
they can be so and not fall into our hard patterns of 
eloquence ; minister to the sorrowful, and heal the 
sick ; even, as in the elder lands, wear crowns and 
sit on thrones, where the honor of a nation shields 
them, and keeps their womanhood untouched from 
whatever is coarse in popular criticism or personal 
assault; and, in a thousand ways, exert that in- 
fluence which is worth more than all our power. 
But everybody who has taken many steps in this 



MANKIND. 315 

world will say, Let them be women still ! For those 
of them who scorn the least leaning on the arm of 
manhood, and assert their absolute independence, 
have evidently broken somehow the divine model 
after which they were fashioned, or are men in dis- 
guise, with all the real properties of a man wrapped 
up under their soft skin, and therefore possibly have 
a right to act as the men they essentially are. She 
certainly is no true woman for whom every man 
may not find it in his heart to have a certain gra- 
cious and holy and honorable love ; she is not a 
woman who returns no love, and asks no protec- 
tion. 

But, as a traveller and observer, I crave pardon 
for so many words on a topic which cannot be opened 
without leading to the expression of opinions as well 
as the record of facts. I only add, that, leaving men 
out of the case, what I have seen and known of wo- 
man, far and near on the earth, is enough to give 
eternal brightness to my thought of human nature, 
and to make me espouse the cause of that nature amid 
all its offences, and defend it in its darkest hour. 
For, in fine, under all its forms, with all its iniqui- 
ties, in my survey, reaching through many countries 
and climes, it has never yet appeared without some 
grace and redeeming quality. Even in this poor 
world of ours, I have never been able to see sin as 
the great fact, evil as the centre, or misery as the 
law. What is bad in the human passions on this 
lower theatre of time is, indeed, always rife, and 
rages often fearfully. Still it is but an exception, — 



316 MANKIND. 

tremendous and overwhelming exception though it 
be. He must be pitied, as narrow-minded and not 
aware of the full love and mercy of God, to whom 
human existence is only a blight, a mischief, and a 
curse. The good predominates ; and I declare it the 
more earnestly, because I think it for the glory of 
God and the welfare of mankind that it should be 
seen to predominate. 



HISTORY. 



27* 



How restless fleet away the years ! 
How blind the fugitives to tears ! 
We send our cries along their track : 
Their echo is, " We come not back : 
Gaze not at us with longing sight ; 
Behold what droppeth in our flight, — 
Riches that mock all plundering power, 
Robes that outlast the festive hour." 



HISTORY. 



If to the host of travellers the question were put, 
"What is the object of your journey ? " there would 
be, from different individuals, how many distinct re- 
plies ! Leaving out health and pleasure, and confin- 
ing the interrogation to simply intellectual aims, 
the answers would still be quite various. Some wish 
to survey the features of the planet, and some to see 
the world in the other way of observing the actual 
pursuits, customs, amusements, and business of 
men. Those, in whom what may be called the ima- 
ginative senses are much exercised, desire especially 
to study the works of ancient and modern art. It 
would be an answer indicating as honorable and lofty 
a view as any other, if one should say he was tra- 
velling to read the history of his race. " The pro- 
per study of mankind is man." But here, too, one 
pilgrim would still be distinguished from another, 
according as he should seem to himself to be perus- 
ing the lines of progress or of one great degeneracy. 
The saying, with many almost proverbial, that his- 
tory is but a relation of crimes and miseries, — if 



320 HISTORY. 

its extravagance have any color of truth, — holds 
only of some of the volumes of written history ; of 
the story of the world as told by the pen, which 
seems to have singled out for its emphasis not the 
good and blessed and quiet course of human affairs, 
but disturbances of peace and order, noisy and sur- 
prising things, plots and invasions, insurrections and 
revolutions ; as we know and remember that the crime 
of one unworthy man may fill a larger space than the 
simple annals of a people. I shall refer to another 
than the literary chronicle. Let us take the earth it- 
self for the volume of its own history, — as, like some 
curious machines, a self-registering instrument, — 
and we shall peruse a different, better-proportioned, 
and brighter tale ; for the reflection that is most 
frequent, and strikes irresistibly deepest, in the mind 
of a surveyor of the globe on a broad scale, is of 
the immense improvement of it through all the as- 
certainable epochs of its duration. The surface and 
soil and whole character of the world through wide 
regions are the work of man. If human reporters 
were silent of its progress, the very stones would 
cry out. To take, for a moment, an illustration so 
superficial: What has been done with them? At 
first lying rude and ragged on the ground, or only 
rending the bosom of the world with their sharp 
points, as they were left by the creative finger, — op- 
pressing the natural productiveness of the soil, or 
piecing, with barren majesty, the empty air, — how 
they have been transformed into every shape of value, 
of gross utility and of spiritual benefit ! From the 



HISTORY. 3£1 

time that Jacob set up his rocky pillow for a me- 
morial in the wilderness of Haran, and called the 
place Bethel, — a word that should go to the end of 
time ; and that Joshua chose twelve stones from 
the river Jordan to celebrate the preserving mercies 
of Heaven ; and Elijah, out of the same hard and 
apparently useless fragments, broken from the foun- 
dations and corners of the earth, built an altar in 
the name of the Lord ; from those times, and from 
periods who can know how much earlier, these 
fruitless scales and waste pieces of the world, by 
the art and feeling of man, have been converted, not 
only into structures of convenience and shelter, but 
into the expression and nurture of the noblest pur- 
poses and the divinest emotions. "The stones of 
Venice " a great author may well call his account of 
the glories of the old architecture. 

Beautiful, indeed, the language thus spoken from 
the heart of man, not alone in edifices still standing, 
but in the ruins that bear witness of a former age. 
As, in a spot inhabited by many successive genera- 
tions, you walk within the enclosure of some disused 
and long-deserted abbey, passing through the grassy, 
roofless aisles, among worn images of faith and 
piety, whose voice, musical above, has been long 
stilled below, you exclaim, " These men were wor- 
shippers, these men were lovers of good, so long 
ago ! " All now may be bleak and bare, uncovered 
to the winds, swept by the tempest. But the sculp- 
tured cross, in which the rough granite is made to 
declare self-sacrifice ; the broken pillars, between 



322 HISTORY. 

which, lips, now ashes, preached the word of God ; 
the finely carved font, in whose drops once young 
and old were baptized into the church of Christ, but 
through whose seams and fractures now the green 
moss tenderly creeps ; the niches of saints above, 
and all around the sepulchres of the just ; the in- 
scriptions, raised in bronze or cut on the very marble 
floor you tread beneath your feet, to the honor of 
those who have done bravely or suffered meekly in 
the cause of truth ; with window and ceiling over- 
head wrought into emblems, of sacred characters 
and scripture incidents, which Nature is busily 
covering with her growth, as though she would heal 
the wounds of Time, and fill up the gashes of the 
elements, and fain hold together a little longer the 
crumbling shafts with her graceful bandages, — all 
these are relics of what the former race has done. 
They make before our eyes the shrine of pilgrimage 
for crowd after crowd of the present generation ; 
they stir the heart with a glow of holy joy, in the 
conviction that the nature of man, whose root we 
grew from and whose moisture is in our limbs, is 
not utterly depraved, his doings not wholly bad, his 
history not merely of evil ; they show that we 
are not the people with whom wisdom was born, and 
so entitled to be censors of our fellow-men ; but 
that what the race has performed most earnestly, and 
yet admires most fervently, is something relating to 
duty, to devotion, to a spirit disinterested and heroic 
even unto death. 

The same feeling goes to the same conclusion as 



HISTORY. 3£3 

you stand in the burial-ground, — which is the end 
of all, and a large chapter in this unwritten, monu- 
mental history of the world. Than the graveyard, 
there is, indeed, no more striking exposition of the 
common nature and temper of mankind. Examin- 
ing that record, through a score of ages on the 
broad front of the world, as made by Jew and 
Christian, by Protestant and Romanist and Heathen, 
all the foolish, personal quarrels of men, all their 
dogmatic and ecclesiastic strifes, appear to you but 
to rage on the distant outside of life, while the 
solemnities of human affection and trust in the Most 
High are identical in the deep recesses of the human 
breast. We may well rejoice that this sequestered 
territory, in which we all have an interest, has its 
sublime entry, its pathetic and encouraging passage, 
in that substantial book of human conduct, that only 
quite trustworthy narrative, the globe itself. The 
account of the graveyard, as it runs through every 
clime, would be a most edifying history. Selected 
ordinarily in a spot of the greatest natural beauty ; 
planted often with those ever-green trees which it 
would seem God himself first set in pity, to sym- 
bolize the longest date, and largest, unwithering 
promise of human hope ; not gloomy, but cheering, 
to the soul look its resting-places for the dead, marked 
with columns which maintain their form, and in some 
measure their position, though declining under the 
roll of many centuries. Yet they are adorned with 
fresh wreaths, which, in foreign parts, it is touching 
to see laid, not alone on the tombs of friends and 



324 HISTORY. 

kinsfolk, but also of genius and virtue, many years 
ago translated to their glory and reward, as though 
the simple, common heart of man took genius and 
virtue themselves for its natural relations. The con- 
trast is very impressive between these white or ver- 
dant offerings of yesterday, and the gray slabs, the 
leaning obelisks, and half-effaced epitaphs, which, in 
their oldness, tell of the death long since of those 
who wrote and reared them, as well as of those for 
whom they were written and reared. As I walked 
through them in many countries, I felt that the 
graveyards of the world are part of its true and 
significant annals. Nor are they like many volumes 
of history on the shelf, — never opened. Millions of 
the living turn from the beaten and dusty tracks of 
travel to pass through these quiet vistas of the dead ; 
they pause to spell out the lines on the tablets, of 
courage and patience, of loyalty to country and 
kindred, of innocence and fidelity, as though they 
knew and felt these to be the most precious of all 
things; they shed gracious tears on the sod, while 
their thoughts are borne up to heaven. Yes : God's 
acre, as in the German tongue the field of the ceme- 
tery is called, is testimony that man, as a species, is 
not utterly base. He does not cast out his brother 
when he is dead ; he does not hurry him, indecently, 
unlamented, into the dust ; he does not leave him 
without at least a signal to announce the measure 
of his term, and indicate the place of his repose ; 
he tenderly cares for the body, the inferior and com- 
paratively worthless and merely perishable part, after 



HISTORY. 325 

he knows the immortal soul, with all its wealth of 
power and affection, has flown. 

I know not what great names and flourishing 
celebrities of the passing hour affected me like the 
sepulchral inscriptions of saints and heroes, founders 
of nations and extenders of the kingdom of ideas, 
whose bodies under my feet slept so still and low. 
As I roamed through Pere la Chaise, the ghosts of 
dead sages and soldiers were everywhere rising and 
gathering thickly around. The shrieks of the vic- 
tims of revolutionary violence had apparently but just 
been stilled ; and the ground seemed to rock with 
every social and political surge by which, for long 
ages, the nation had been swept. History was there 
present, telling, not the tedious and well-nigh inter- 
minable tale of the pen, but some of the sublimest 
and most touching periods of man's vast career. 
The heart could not keep from burning, or the feet 
from trembling, as from grave after grave, while I 
passed along, came forth, ever and anon, some 
shadow of the actors in great crises of the world's 
affairs for a silent greeting with my spirit. A kind 
of resurrection was taking place all around me. The 
dust and ashes were moved to let some mysterious, 
vital influence into my bosom. Who can doubt of 
a real and final resurrection ? 

So at Frankfort and Prague, and in many of the 
older spots of the world, where Mother Earth has 
first brought forth and then reclaimed her share in 
the frame of man, my thoughts were even more pro- 
foundly stirred to see different nations and races, 

28 



326 HISTORY. 

from east and west and north and south, lying in 
the ground together ; as I trusted their spirits, ac- 
cording to the word of Jesus, were in the kingdom 
of God. On the earth, at least, the warring tribes 
and strangers from afar were mingled in peace. In- 
dian and German, American and Roman, Frank and 
Russian, the Saxon and the Celt, had made their bed 
together. May this rest in death prove no false 
image of men's final tranquillity of life here below, 
as well as in the celestial land ! 

I know not what attraction, but one that I share 
with my race, drew me everywhere, in England and 
France, in Germany and Italy, into the burial- 
ground, — whither all the sons of men must fol- 
low their fathers, — and held me so to study human 
nature in its last, earthly remains ; lingering long to 
decipher the quaint, wiry, glittering decorations of 
the Catholic, or the graver emblems of the dissent- 
ing, faith. I only know it was no dark sentence in 
this history of mankind on which my eyes there 
fell ; but one suggesting more cheerful and consoling 
lessons than I gathered from scenes of the finest 
animation, out of the din of the market and the 
haste of the street, from the tables of feasting and 
all the halls of music and pleasure, — which, I know 
not how, when away from home, were the melan- 
choly things ; while what are commonly counted 
sober, if not saddening, scenes exerted over me a 
delightful attraction. Ah ! my experience was true 
to a frequent mood of the universal human heart, to 
which sport and amusement may not seldom become 



HISTORY. 327 

melancholy, and serious meditation incomparably 
sweet. The bright and cheerful spaces tenanted by 
the followers of Jesus, the dim and narrow corners 
where the Hebrew ashes are piled thickly, sown 
among the interfering tombs for immortality, won or 
bound me as with a spell ; and both gave me a ten- 
der feeling to my kind. 

As you may see the character of the inmates of a 
house which you enter, or for the first time begin to 
occupy, by the traces they have left of themselves 
on their dwelling ; so, judging of man, not of par- 
ticular individual men, but of the race, in this way, 
by the stamp he has made on his terrestrial abode, — 
reading the history, not which literary authors, but his 
own little, wonder-working fingers, have written, — 
he is not to be set down as a creature for ever erring, 
completely abandoned and lost. Unworthy, guilty 
men enough there have been for our warning in the 
great career of time ; yet, thank God, — for it is im- 
portant to our fundamental faith, essential morality, 
and needful encouragement, — thank God that man 
himself, in his whole nature and tendency, is not 
proved false and delinquent, but of a temper gene- 
rously endeavoring and grandly aspiring. So, cling- 
ing to the earth itself as text or commentary, I must 
affirm that it teaches a doctrine of respect for the 
being our Maker has bestowed. If we respect not 
the being, how can we respect the Maker that has 
bestowed it? That, indeed, man does respect the 
nature God has given him, might be proved by many 
of the very inscriptions on the tombs to which I 



328 HISTORY. 

have referred. To show the hope and aspiration of 
the human heart, I will repeat one of these which I 
saw on a gravestone in the city of Edinburgh, and 
which wrote itself on my memory. It is the senti- 
ment of a parent bereft of the mortal presence of a 
little child : — 

" This tender bud, so fresh and fair, 
Called hence by early doom, 
Just came to show how sweet a flower 
In paradise would bloom." 

But particular illustrations of our point would be 
without end. The earth, the old earth, under the 
treatment and handling of its inhabitants, — is it that 
of which we speak ? Why, it could now scarce 
be known for the same by one who saw it in its first 
estate, so changed as it is from a mass of the refuse 
of waves and storms, from a coarse and reeking 
lump of clod and ledge, from a heap of rank growth 
and rotten decay, into endless increase of order and 
fertility. 

I take witnesses that cannot lie, or be rejected, or 
in any way ruled out. With the stones themselves, 
that testify of improvement, of something right and 
worthy in the faculties and desires of the human 
mind, also joins in accord the meanest part of the 
creation, the very dust of the valley, by what it has, 
under man's culture, been made to produce, in 
flower and fruit, for the appetite of his body and the 
imagination of his soul. Proofs do you ask ? You 
cannot turn towards the shrub that blooms beside 



HISTORY. 3&9 

you at the window in your chamber, saluting your 
senses with its beauty and fragrance ; you cannot sit 
to partake of nourishing food at your daily board ; 
certainly you cannot walk through the gardens of the 
world, — without observing, in a living history, the 
demonstration of what man, by God's help, has done 
to repair and better the sphere of his mortal occupa- 
tion. I know the fairest blossoms and the richest 
grains of the meadow and hillside are called the 
productions of Nature ; but they are not the mere 
productions of Nature. They would never have been 
brought forth through her wild, untutored force. 
Thorns and thistles, sour and bitter food, would she 
of herself have offered. It is the mixture of the 
human genius and will with her germs that has be- 
gotten this splendid beauty and delicious nutriment 
which we ourselves admire and flourish with. The 
clearing of the wood for the cultivation of the soil 
is said to soften the very climate of a country, and 
bring in all the material and moral consequences of 
that softening. And it is the care and intelligence 
of man that have chosen the best situations for the 
seed ; that have tempered and mixed, for the perfec- 
tion of particular products, the qualities of the soil ; 
yea, that have summoned out of earth and air and 
sea the very elements needed to foster the tender 
shoot, — fending other elements off, and keeping them 
away, — till, under God, he has made the very land- 
scape his creation, and stretched the garden of Eden, 
which was once but a little Oriental, Asiatic spot, 
as a belt round the earth, and a garment of beauty 

28* 



330 HISTORY. 

far toward the poles. Yes, man is the improver of 
the world ; and man, in his own deeds, the compiler 
of his own history. 

One of a thousand illustrations of this occurred 
to me as I rode through the fine and most ancient 
Brenner Pass of the south-eastern Alps. Our path 
advanced in the midst of the original savageness of 
the world. The mountain-peaks stood sternly ; the 
ravines in their sides yawned grimly ; the tracks of 
former avalanches opened, desolate and ominous, as 
other materials for the fearful slide balanced and 
toppled on high. Far below, the torrents dashed 
fiercely, as it would seem they had done since the 
beginning of the creation. Only a chain of half- 
ruined castles, dating from the middle ages, hung 
along the declivities, where they had taken the place 
of the towers which the Roman general, Drusus, 
had cast down from the tremendous tops. With 
such associations accumulating only to add to the 
awful and unalterable grandeur, at length, almost 
suddenly as if we had been lowered into a pit, we 
were let down the terrific brow of the hills, — out 
of the Alpine clime, with its bareness, its stony 
ruggedness, or stinted growth, — directly among 
what but the figs and lemons, olives and pome- 
granates and mulberries, in their fenced and trellised 
beauty, — a fine specimen indeed of human handi- 
work ! Every one of these might, indeed, have some- 
where taken root and germinated, and run into a half- 
ripening, half- corrupting luxuriance, without human 
care. Yet to what did they owe their fulness and ma- 



HISTORY. 331 

turity and rich assemblage, turning that rough gorge 
and mountain pit — else a frightful hollow of coarse 
vegetation and poisonous decay — into a picture and 
paradise, as it were, set sheer off and floated far away 
from some region of fairyland? They owed it to 
nothing save the pruning and tending hand of man. 
With every gathering of the forces and concentra- 
tion of earthly agencies at the command of intellect 
and skill, — which alone are in command in this 
world, — to yield ever-new forms of riches and 
plenty ; this too is, no less than bloody narratives 
of sieges and slaughters, part of the history of the 
world. 

I wish to conceal no page in this big volume, 
which the globe is, of the annals of mankind. I 
see in it other signatures than altogether fair and 
pleasant ones ; I mark well the lines which publish, 
in the actual features of the planet, the contentions 
of war, as well as the happy and kindly and thou- 
sand-fold exceeding victories of peace. In some 
maps of the world, every spot, which has been the 
theatre of any signal conflict in the bloody arbitra- 
ment of battle, is marked with the engraving of a 
red flag. Truly, these little flags are planted thick 
over the geographical territory of modern Europe ; 
and the traveller sees still tokens as frequent on 
the soil, that, while strife still rages in some places, 
it is only hushed into doubtful and uneasy slumber 
in others. He cannot overlook the low and grisly- 
looking fort, for which, as for cathedral and cross 
and holy shrine, the earth has been constrained to 



332 HISTORY. 

yield the substance from her bones. There it stands, 
on some eminent, artfully selected spot of vantage. 
Its hundred hard, uncomely corners, looking as if 
every one of them might inflict a wound if you 
approached, represent well the fierce, unlovely spirit 
of strife. From each angle and embrasure you note 
that the deadly missile can be made to fly ; and 
each of these stone apertures may become in a mo- 
ment the cannon's mouth of flame, as, from unseen 
loopholes, the musket-ball darts, exposing every 
comer over the brow of the hill many times to the 
peril of being laid low. 

Here is this horrible anomaly, that, while wild 
beasts and birds of prey seldom war against their 
own kind or pluck out each other's eyes, man is 
doomed to be slain by his fellow-man. What is the 
meaning of this clause in our history ? It is, no 
doubt, that, with finer capacities and aspirations to 
develop and test our virtue, there are excessive lusts 
and inclinations to wrong in the human bosom, 
which must be watched against and repressed. 
But — the dispositions existing — these warnings 
and threatenings against them, in iron and stone, 
which man himself has with sad necessity contrived, 
we are not to regard with pain or displeasure. They 
are not themselves the incendiaries and stirrers of 
ill-blood, but properly rather officers of the peace. 
Inevitably appointed, created by man, they are stiff 
opposers of the commencement of quarrels. They 
are like reason and conscience, or the strength of 
will against the passions, in the constitution of the 



HISTORY. 333 

individual mind. Sometimes, indeed, they are tools 
grasped by the wicked, to carry their malignant pur- 
poses ; but oftener they are instruments of right 
and order, for the subduing of crime, or for patriotic 
defence. The soldier is not, of course, a demon ; 
and he may conscientiously perform his office, while 
yet he obeys the Scripture injunction of doing 
violence to no man by passionate riot or malicious 
assault; although his office and the degree of its 
necessity are of course a measure of the hot, insur- 
gent, inordinate impulses, with the diifering ideas 
and moral judgments, of the human soul. Yet let 
us do justice even to the soldier, and to human nature 
in him. Alas ! without his uniform there may be 
iniquities as great as were ever done under it. The 
peace-man or the citizen, the trader or the toiler, 
must not lose sight of his own temptations and 
transgressions in his clamor against warriors. The 
warm and honest inspiration of duty has been in 
many a warrior's bosom. 

In one of the antique religious temples of Scot- 
land, now wasting away, which I visited, I beheld it 
engraven on a polished stone, that the heart of Bruce 
was deposited beneath; and, as I stood there, I 
asked, "What religious conviction, what Christian sen- 
timent, would thrust that brave heart from its place, — 
would pluck it from beneath the floor, and throw it 
away ? Who would forbid a thrill of admiration for 
the daring and endurance he brought as the sincere 
offering, for which his nature, fashioned by God, 
fitted him, to the defence and honor of his native 



334 HISTORY. 

land, and which make the gazer on his tomb ex- 
claim, ' No : his heart is not here, cold and still, but 
everywhere where the inspirations of patriotism and 
disinterested heroism are required ' ? " In the mili- 
tary museums of England and France and Germany, I 
walked through the long rows of steel-plated armor 
worn in old centuries of conflict, and marvelled at 
the strangely fashioned swords and guns captured 
from Eastern foes, to be turned against their former 
owners ; and saw the thick helmets and heavy 
breastplates, here and there dinted through by the 
stroke of poniard or lance. I wondered at the giant 
strength and patience which bore that weight through 
the terrible fray. In those letters, of shield and mail 
and spear, I read what we must call the barbaric por- 
tion of the world's history more vividly than it 
could be traced in any reporter's descriptions of con- 
quest or retreat. I declared to myself, " These, and 
not granite and marble, are the real monuments of 
the past." Yet, while I felt these were pictures of 
deeds to be done away as the better spirit of the gospel 
shall prevail, I felt, too, that upright and noble comba- 
tants, not a few, mingled with the cruel and the base ; 
and that we at this day, who talk so finely of our no- 
tions of reform, should not have the privileges, civil 
and religious, which we enjoy, but for the resistance 
unto blood of the patriot to the traitor, and of the 
faithful to the vile. 

Yes, war itself, while it has expressed the baleful 
principles as well as holy inspirations of the human 
heart, and been the channel of the grossest iniqui- 



HISTORY. 335 

ties as well as loftiest achievements of time, has not 
had the effect of preventing, and shall not have force 
to make me deny or question, the progress of the 
race. It has often cleansed the world of the sins it 
manifested, and which took it for their instrument 
and medium. It cannot entirely blacken the glory 
of that monumental history of the race which is 
written on the solid frame of the globe. Nay, in 
its own relics of former power and terror, it teaches 
the drawing nigh of a day of milder methods of 
correction for mankind. In this view, nothing so 
interests the pilgrim as these ruins of ancient towers 
and places of military strength, which make the land- 
scape of Europe picturesque, from the first landing 
he makes on the English shores to where the Danube 
rolls its eddying and troubled waters towards the 
Black Sea. 

Perhaps, however, one is nowhere more struck 
with the march of civilization than while examining 
the military relics within the English domain ; for 
instance, such a one as the magnificent Castle of 
Warwick. Both points for a comparison are so near 
at hand as to make the impression deep. The castle 
stands grim as ever in its frowning battlements and 
its points of observation and defence. It overhangs 
a stream below, which, could it speak, might tell 
many a tale of awe, as, in old times, it may have 
whispered mournfully to ears in the neighboring 
dungeon-vaults, by the base of whose immemorial 
structure it sweeps. But how opposed is this figure 
of the castle to every thing else around ! How the 



336 HISTORY. 

grand enchantment of antiquity in it seems almost 
out of place, and its portentous threat an affront to 
the soul ! For, behold the green culture, the domes- 
tic comfort, the social peace, that now creep to the 
very verge of its precincts ; as though in prophecy 
that some day these embattled walls shall fall before 
even the so light assault of the waving grass and 
grain, and children shall run over the sandy dust of 
what once kept hosts at bay, and seemed to " threat 
the skies " ! The mighty armor shown us, how 
formidable once, how impotent now ! " Pharaoh is 
sold for balsams," says Sir Thomas Browne ; and the 
terrible monster, that affrighted and shook whole re- 
gions, has become a curiosity, for being admitted to 
see which one pays a fee. 

Of still more romantic interest to us, on account of 
the part it has played both in actual life and literature, 
as well as the touching decay in which lie the halls 
that held such scenes of festive joy and heart-rending 
anguish, was Kenilworth. With what pathos, equal- 
ling beauty, the eternal freshness of nature clothes 
the ragged stones, rent from the situations in which 
they once enclosed the privacy of gracious affections 
or the plots of cruel hate ! How the starlings and 
swallows, as they flew and chattered overhead, 
motioned to us on their swift wings, as if to hint 
the speed with which the grandeurs of the world 
pass away, and told, in their seemingly senseless 
talk, of the vanity that is in all the noise and uproar 
of human passions ! Truly those mouldering rem- 
nants of rude decay are a type of waste in the 



HISTORY. 337 

perishing institutions which their massive and sightly 
order once so formidably represented. 

Still more deeply did I have the same feeling in 
the Castle of Landek, in the Tyrol, as I saw it so 
sunk from its pristine honor, its exterior adorned 
with heraldic signs of imperial power, but its inward 
parts dilapidated and desolate, inhabited with dirty, 
half-clad children and stinging flies, its roof rotting, 
its moat stagnant and offensive, and its whole appear- 
ance grand only to the eye looking from afar. So 
decline the noble things of old, informing us, more 
sadly than can any poet's line, that — 

" The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 

As, again, from another castle in Savoy, I gazed 
into the gloomy mouth of an Alpine gorge, I asked, 
" "Where are they who built the ramparts, over whose 
rough and scattered pieces I have climbed alone ? " 
The wind suddenly freshened upon me, and the sky 
darkened, as I put my query. Was some answer 
intended to my interrogation ? Did the spirits, from 
their inconceivable abode, breathe back a response, 
to say, that, for all their well-doing and disinterested 
heroism, their present state was more blessed ; but, 
for every evil purpose and cruel deed, their lot in 
the supernatural sphere was the darker and the 
worse ? 

But there is history not only in the castles that 
pierce the sky. The very ground on which they 
stand, could the ear be laid close thereto or the eye 

29 



338 HISTORY. 

discern it truly, would make revelations which no 
pen has yet been able to record. Such is the ground 
of Italy and France and Germany and the whole 
continent of Europe. But take, for example, the 
territory of our English forefathers. How it has 
been actually made, not by nature, but by race after 
race that has run over it, with alternate weapons of 
war and implements of industry ! Not only is the 
subdued and fertile glebe, inherited by the present 
generation, at once a leaf in the history of mankind 
and in the volume of the strata of the earth ; but 
the moral soil out of which grows the character of 
the existing people is constituted by the bones and 
ashes of their predecessors. To one coming from 
the broader lands of the Old World, it seems in- 
credible that the — 

" White -faced shore, 
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides, 
And coops from other lands her islanders," 

should have in its little compass included such 
achievements. How well I still remember my own 
somewhat proud amazement, in returning from the 
wide continental reaches, at the evidences of superior 
power in that narrow compass of England, as though 
her insect body had limbs to reach round the world ! 
Truly a rich yield of nourishment for mankind has 
come from her little space. But, after all, we are 
not astonished at large and splendid products from a 
small garden which has been plenteously enriched 
for ages. Behold the blood that has been so lavishly 



HISTORY. 389 

poured out to fertilize the soil within that "water- 
walled bulwark " ! See tribe after tribe, from distant 
parts of the earth, laying down their spent bodies in 
that little space, " hedged in with the main " ! What 
a mixture of stimulating and productive powers from 
the valor and genius, the heroism and martyrdom, 
the barbarian force and the delicate affection, that 
have consecrated those fields, and prepared them for 
the growth of all that is best in humanity ! Even 
England, however, chief of nations as she is, comes 
far short of the idea of a perfect people. The re- 
spect she pays to rank and wealth hurts the honor 
supremely due to intellect and virtue. The show r s 
of things still beguile her from the worship of reality. 
The noble is more to her than the saint. She looks 
to this world, — not to the better. Her pride exceeds 
her dignity, her independence is more than her 
freedom, the external standard she rears for human 
rights is loftier than her inward humanity, and her 
formal worship deadens the vital acknowledgment 
of God ; while the prudential virtues of the past 
threaten to extinguish the flames of aspiration and 
the immortal light of genius in her breast. But we 
shall not be amazed at her actual attainments, or in- 
clined to over-praise the trophies of the transcendent 
renown she sets against her manifest defects, when 
we consider the loamy depth where she grows, and 
the choice roots of manhood out of which she has 
sprung. England's practical power for good, in 
which she has so long led the civilization of the 
globe, is her best reply to all criticism. To the 



340 HISTORY. 

commander of our steamship, — one of the noblest 
that ever swam the seas, — I said that I had been 
warned against taking passage in his vessel, it being 
alleged to me that the force of her engines had 
strained her timbers. " They see her come and go ! " 
was all he deigned for answer. Might not the same 
answer be made to every complaint of the nobler 
mistress of the seas ? Beneficently to the world she 
holds her way over the floods of time. Nowhere 
did I feel what a conqueror she has been, in an intel- 
lectual as well as material way, as I felt it at the 
meetings of the British Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, in which earls from ancient seats of 
power, representing olden deeds of valor, and ad- 
mirals from their dauntless cruising towards the dim 
and frosty pole, and geographers from Oriental ex- 
plorations, and geologists from their travels into the 
earth as well as round it, and chemists from their 
laboratories, and experimenters in metallurgy and 
botany and building and enginery, — in short, the 
professors and practitioners of every branch of hu- 
man knowledge, — vied together in their efforts to 
advance the information and comfort of mankind. 
The whole scene, exhibiting the results of thousands 
of years of toil and study, pictured the nation itself 
as embodying more of what we mean by history 
than does now any other on the face of the globe. 

It is quite in order, in my present essay, to dwell 
so much on England ; for, more than any other spot, 
she is history. But where shall we find, in general, 
the history of the world, save in the monuments and 



HISTORY. 341 

instruments, the buildings and utensils, trie arts and 
cultivation, the inscriptions and sunken pillars, the 
enterprises and improvements of the past ; in these 
folios of brass and marble, these letters of stone, 
this ink of blood, these human periods of graves, 
these exclamations from crosses and gallows and fu- 
neral piles ; and the interrogatories that seem, with 
such melancholy significance, to come to us from the 
blocks in guarded galleries or open squares, where 
the guilty or unfortunate have laid down their heads ! 
Oh ! there are dumb orators, of earth's annals,, more 
eloquent — may we not say more true? — than any 
who grace anniversary occasions, or hotly espouse 
rival interests in book or pamphlet, and perhaps 
wholly mystify the simple fact about what is so plain 
and moving on the very face of the world. 

Admitting any equitable exceptions, the real his- 
tory of the world is written at large on its own 
frame, in whatever has been done permanently 
to improve its condition and better its population. 
The multitudes of the idle and injurious, among the 
children of men, have passed away little heeded, 
mostly leaving but slight mark of themselves ; while 
the diligent and good have atoned for their sloth, or 
been able to repair their injuries. Very striking are 
the sentences in the old Bible, that " the remembrance 
of the wicked shall perish and be cut off from the 
earth, and he shall have no name in the street ; but 
the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance. 
He rests from his labors, and his works follow him." 

It is a question too opportune and momentous to 



34:2 HISTORY. 

be by any in such circumstances evaded : Ci To which 
of these sorts do we belong, — to that of the negli- 
gent and sinful, who die and have no memory that is 
worth having, or is long kept ; or to that of the 
moral and industrious, who promote the common 
welfare, and whose doings are, by the race and heart 
of man, accepted into the history of the world, like 
a book into the canon of the Bible ? " If we are of 
the indolent and faithless, then every work from the 
foundation of the world, that has multiplied by one 
jot or tittle the general prosperity, is our reproach. 
Ay : every wall against the flood, every protection 
from the weather, every beam hewn and laid in 
any worthy structure, cries out against us. Every 
utensil for convenience, devised and made, to be it- 
self substantial part of man's history ; every en- 
gine, invented and carried through successive steps 
of excellence, reproves our unprofitableness. Every 
wheel that turns on land or sea, every pier and mole 
that withstands the waves, is State's evidence for our 
condemnation. Every household implement we use, 
the very clothing that covers, and the food that nou- 
rishes us, is quick and bitter in its sentence upon a 
lazy and foolish life. The grass of the field, the 
kernels of corn, the clusters of the vineyard, are 
man's witnesses and God's messengers to tell of our 
miserable deficiency; and homes of comfort and 
temples of prayer alike bring the announcement of 
our shortcoming and sin. Not only grand accom- 
plishments, but lowly ones, for human good, are the 
sluggard's accusation, and should be the wasteful 



HISTORY. 343 

man's remorse. Every sight of fidelity is the brand 
of his shame, every sound of industry the smarting 
blow of his self-upbraiding. But, if we are laboring 
for the well-being of our fellow-creatures, we have 
a place in this substantial, monumental history of 
the world. Our name may not last, engraved on 
the earth or blown from the trumpet of fame ; but 
our work will endure. Somehow, somewhere, it 
will enter into the history, as long as man himself, 
in the inconceivable length of his generations, shall 
live ; and it shall come up again when the heavens 
are no more. In a chapel, near the city of Edin- 
burgh, is shown an exquisite pillar, wrought by an 
apprentice, killed by the mean master that was jea- 
lous of his success. No eulogy of its maker is in- 
scribed upon it. It is itself, resting on the earth, 
visited and read by myriads, his history. 

The somewhat ambitious title of History, for the 
sake of brevity given to this piece, I have justified 
only by some very slight glimpses and hints of that 
in which history consists. History, as commonly 
understood, is certainly one of the most valuable and 
instructive kinds of composition. I shall be con- 
tent, however, if I may convince any, that, for just 
and vivid ideas of the fortunes of our race, we must 
not trust entirely to that literary record, more or less 
extended and elaborate, which, when we are young, 
we read with a sort of superstition, as though it were 
the original voice of the human heart ; but that we 
should, far as we are able, seek the substantial wit- 
nesses, and the veritable, though it may be mute, re- 



344 HISTORY. 

lators of the great tale of human action and suffering 
in this world. 

To the traveller, in the Old World especially, his- 
tory becomes more real than it can be on any printed 
page. It startles one like something suddenly lifted 
from the dead ; it stands in actual presence before 
us ; it holds up its handwriting, in characters of 
age and depth that amaze the dweller in this new 
region, with his eyes so long used to reading chiefly 
the bright signatures of hope and prophecies of the 
future. Every thing to him in yonder hemisphere 
is historic ; and inanimate objects themselves are the 
historians. A quaint old town like Nuremberg 
shall take him farther back than Hallam can on the 
way to the middle ages. Gibbon and Hume must 
retire for a time, when England and Italy themselves, 
with all their cities, speak to us. The walls of the 
houses, in parts of Germany, written over to the 
passer's eye with pious inscriptions, are worth a good 
deal of Mosheim and Gieseler, for ecclesiastical an- 
nals. Some broken cross, by which once men knelt 
in their extremity; or shattered baptismal bowl, 
where they devoted their offspring, with their own 
bodies, to death for conscience' sake ; the armor 
that brave soldiers wore through the fray, and, when 
pierced, lay down to die in, — a nobler coffin than 
now holds their ashes, and grander monument than 
obelisks of granite or marble ; the bridges where 
heroes stood, the streams they swam, the cells in 
which they pined, the ground they wet with their 
willing blood, that great institutions for posterity 



HISTORY. 345 

might grow there, — oh ! such as these things tell 
us most pathetically the tale of our humanity ; and 
we feel, while we stand amid such associations, that 
the very ground under our feet is the flesh of our 
worthy brethren, and the atmosphere their spirit. 
As we abide among the touching memorials of the 
past, a mysterious feeling comes over us of the age 
of our race, and of its many diverse fortunes. We 
think of the builders whose bodies rest beneath 
their building, and whose souls long since rose 
aloft. If the wind swells, it is their breath upon 
us. The rain, that begins to fall, is Nature's tribute 
to their names. Our eyes moisten in sympathy ; 
our answering sobs are not wailings, but thanks- 
givings ; our grief for the great departed, in the 
presence of their achievements, is but gladness so 
exquisite as to partake of pain. 



DESTINY. 



Dim fade old pageants from the stage ; 
Fresh prospects light the coming age : 
Shows, vain or tragic, yield their place ; 
Humanity unmasks her face. 
Knowledge and love, a wedded pair, 
Haste to reveal their features fair ; 
And Nature's axle gleaming flies, 
Fraught with untold realities. 



DESTINY. 



I sat on the ragged wall of a ruined tower on the 
brow of a mountain boldly overlooking the town of 
Martigny, near the Swiss borders, and commanding 
the prospect of an immense valley made by an ellip- 
tical chain of steep summits. It was eventide on 
Sunday. I had, in the early day, shared, so far as I 
could, in the worship in several buildings of the 
Romish church, and had now sought my lofty soli- 
tude, in a house " not made with hands," for medi- 
tation, so dear and consoling to the mind of one 
absent from home. My thoughts travelled first, in 
a moment, as, unlike other vehicles, they can travel, 
to a far-off, familiar sanctuary. I reflected how dif- 
ferent everywhere on my way the sabbath services 
from its wonted simplicity, and somewhat sadly 
missed my privilege. But soon my mind became 
intently engaged on the scene below ; and this was 
the point in it that impressed me, — namely, that 
every thing was in motion : the river Rhone rolling 
far through the interval, while in its winding course 
it received a tributary torrent from the hills ; the 

30 






350 DESTINY. 

summer leaves and buds bursting on the waving 
boughs of the trees ; the clouds flying through the 
air, and their shadows over the ground ; the people, 
from their dwellings and various altars of praise, 
walking along the banks of the stream ; the sun 
declining ; the earth turning, — motion, motion in 
all ! " Motion whereto ? " I exclaimed. One thing 
or person is moving one way, and another in another 
way ; but whither are they all moving ? 

It was not the only occasion on which the same 
query had arisen to my mind. At some steamer's 
landing or great railway station, by day or by night, 
waiting amid the boundless buzz and whirl with 
which the world at the great centres of travel is 
emptied out and re-absorbed, and looking round for 
my own particular conveyance, the feeling has often 
come over me, The world is a very strange world, 
and the purpose of it hard to comprehend. "What is 
the meaning of all this complex, multitudinous stir ; 
of these wheels ever revolving, and turning the 
waters into foam, to carry to and fro companies of 
persons composed of the natives of every clime, 
from America to Hindostan ; these trains from afar, 
announced, as with fiery eyeballs, by the blaze of 
their coming; arriving with their huge bulk, and 
then passing successively, like great ships, into the 
gloom again beyond ? Amid the swarming myriads, 
that, by wheels or sails, are crossing each other's 
track all over the planet, one set of travellers chooses 
this direction, and a different set chooses that ; but 
whither is the whole earth-full of them going ? In 



DESTINY. 35 1 

other words, what is the object in the making of the 
world ? What is the end of human existence ? We 
look back and trace our history a little ; let us also 
look forward and inquire into our destiny. Some, I 
know, will declare this a senseless inquiry. Some 
will affirm that we can form no idea of what is to 
happen ; as I once heard a man soberly say, that 
it would not surprise him if the next day he should 
hear that Europe was sunk in the sea, so little did he 
believe in any possible calculation of the purpose of 
creation, any tracing of the Creator's plan, or cast- 
ing of the horoscope of human destiny. But the 
human heart, by all the religions which have grown 
out of it or come down to it, has been led to believe 
in some great object and consummation of life. It is 
convinced, and it predicts as clearly as ever did any 
prophet, that as certainly as the rain and snow have 
an errand, and do not return in barren circuit to 
heaven, having accomplished nothing, but make the 
earth fruitful ; so there is for humanity a decree, a 
word of God to be fulfilled. This word is expressed 
in his voice to seers, in his inspiration in the mind of 
all his servants and children, in the course of his 
Providence, and every indication of his design in 
the universe. If we can detect any uniform ten- 
dency in the events of his ordination under the sun, 
then that is his word ; for it shows to what we are 
coming, as the accomplishment of the heavenly plan 
of human life. 

Advantageously to study this, though not disposed 
to exasperate the benefits of mere locomotion, I am 



35% DESTINY. 

constrained to say, that one must leave the shores of 
a country so new as our own, and survey the marks 
which generation after generation has left of it- 
self in older settlements on the globe. As, inside 
of the earth, diverse species have made, in petrifac- 
tion, the record of what they were ; so, outside of 
it, the stamp of former races of men is not so obli- 
terated but that we can compare it with the work of 
the present age. No human remains, it is said, are 
found in the depths of the globe ; but those on its 
surface are worth more than all the relics in its 
bowels. Going through a great gallery, one may 
read the whole history of painting in separate pieces 
of canvas upon the walls, arranged for that purpose, 
from the rudest attempts of the earliest times to the 
finest triumphs of art. Let me try to detect the 
tide in human affairs, by holding up in contrast dis- 
tinct pictures from widely-sundered periods in the 
life of the race. 

I may do this in describing one of the most famous 
and happy of all journeys, — a voyage up the Rhine. 
The picture of the actual present in such a voyage is 
certainly one of the most fair and delightful that 
mortal eyes can behold, — a watery pathway, for 
much of the distance winding through highlands, 
so enclosing you as you go on, that the river is 
turned into a thousand separate lakes, whose chain of 
smooth mirrors is indeed a grateful exchange for the 
frowning face of the broad and angry sea. For foun- 
dations ever quaking beneath, there is before you 
a bright, endless road over a level floor. It would 



DESTINY. 353 

seem as if a beneficent deity, the good genius of 
your life, meant for once perfectly to charm you with 
images of quiet, untroubled beauty, as you glide over 
the bosom of these inland waters, with flight like 
that of a bird, between the transparent heaven above 
and the repeated heaven below, — passing from re- 
flection to reflection of splendor, ever wonderfully 
tempering your interest and enjoyment with tran- 
quillity, with nothing to alarm or rouse you from the 
wondrous dream into which your bodily vision seems 
to be converted, as you recline and gaze at gentle 
bend after bend in the current, and slope after swell- 
ing slope of the shores ; the heights not so lofty as 
to amaze or excite, but soaring only to vary the 
landscape, and melt with sweet outlines into the 
sky ; the rugged robes of ice and snow, which, from 
the Alps, hang their terrible fringes of glaciers down 
as with a besom of destruction to sweep the ground, 
here exchanged for the soft dress of vineyards, with 
patterns of matchless colors clothing the delicately 
rounded uplands, or casting a garment of tenderness 
and grace on what might else approach to naked 
and precipitous crags ; at points the banks drawing 
near to each other, and then departing, as if to dis- 
close their magnificence more completely, or show 
that the channel of the liquid, scarcely rippling 
waves was only dug by the great Maker, — who re- 
fined here the movement of his hand, — that, for 
such enchantment, he might let his creatures easily 
through. 

Meanwhile, to second the material tranquillity, the 

30* 



354 DESTINY. 

representatives of all nations under heaven, in moral 
concord, civil community, and social harmony, float 
together in common admiration of this marvellous 
mixture of stillness and change, this rich painting, in 
which every curving line and fitting hue meet at 
once to allure and lull the soul, to open and half shut 
the eye ; the same tone running through perpetual 
alteration ; the delicious sunlight alike enriching the 
prospect and tuning the whole frame to its beholding ; 
till, in the trance, you may almost grow doubtful of 
your position, and ask whether you are transported 
through the panorama, or the panorama, as in the illu- 
sion of the stage, is advancing by you. 

Were I, in short, to give the effect in one word, 
it would be, peace ; peace among these bordering 
kingdoms, through whose carefully ruled bounds 
and relations the unruffled river flows ; peace for the 
soul, in its high, glad contemplations ; and, better 
still, the peace of God that passes understanding, and 
which, from such even and undisturbed glories of 
his workmanship, he would seem specially intend- 
ing to infuse. So, with nice, unerring instinct, the 
Germans call that stream of theirs Father Rhine, no 
doubt for the bounty with which he nourishes, and 
the benignity with which he binds in prevailing 
tranquillity together, the nations, his children, that 
stand by his side or cling around his feet. 

But it has not always been peace and serenity in 
this scene. Oh, how far otherwise ! The evidence 
is before you. Lo, all along the hill-sides, between 
which you glide, lie the bones of a pre-existing 



DESTINY. 855 

monster of war, — as it were the fossil remains and 
huge skeletons of strife and battle, — in those mined 
ramparts and robber-castles of stone, which continu- 
ally re-appear, and fix the traveller's curious regard. 
As the geologist professes to reconstruct enormous 
primeval creatures from a few remnants of their solid 
organization ; so, from these ragged heaps and half- 
destroyed towers, may we imagine re-formed the 
theatre of deadly struggle, which this same now 
blessed and mild-looking river Rhine some time in 
bygone ages was. Ploughed with wrathful pas- 
sions ; crossed in the desperate haste of plunder, so 
different from this calm passage; echoing with 
shouts of onset and screams of woe and bitter groans 
of death, so different from these tones of conversa- 
tion varied with music ; stained from many a heart 
with the blood — so different from the juice of 
these purpling clusters — that has mingled with the 
tide, now so unconscious, and flowed out to the 
ocean, as the cries of agony were lost in the air ; the 
siege of those then lofty, but now downcast, places 
of strength alternating with fearful slaughter in the 
vale or plain ; and the whole region haunted with 
stories of suffering and traditions of guilt, with 
horrible accounts of woe, cruelty, and crime, — oh, 
what a change and shifting of the figures ! Does not 
this picture of the past, compared with or offset against 
that of the present, on the very spot of whose glossy 
brightness so dim and ghastly it lies, disclose a ten- 
dency, which expresses the will and word of God, 
and corresponds with the slowly resounding, but 



356 DESTINY. 

clearly heard and certainly to be fulfilled, song of 
angels, — of peace on earth, and good-will to men ? 
I have given an illustration to paint the fact that 
might be proved by many details. The same ten- 
dency will discover itself if you survey the walled 
towns all over Europe, which are so many almost 
innumerable strong demonstrations of a pervading 
proneness to strife and exposure to peril. These 
vast girdles and thick environments of rock now are, 
in general, a kind of cast-off clothes. They are to 
cities what once was the cumbrous brocade, worn 
like a fortification upon the persons of some of our 
ancestry, growing more and more useless every day. 
Behold indeed another change ! The tops of these 
surrounding belts of rock-masonry, once mounted 
with cannon, are now calm and romantic promenades 
for the delectation of peering travellers or the play- 
ground of children; the moats and ditches, once 
filled with water to warn or drown assailants, are 
now empty, dry, and grass-grown ; the drawbridge 
of the baronial tower is broken, and the portcullis, 
with its teeth still sharp and portentous overhead, 
rusts, never to slide again, like an enormous guillo- 
tine, in the grooves of its socket ; and fragments of 
shields and helmets, swords and spear-heads, which 
it would almost seem were once within the grasp or 
upon the body of every one that had got beyond his 
boyhood, are dug from the soil, to be preserved in 
museums. All these, and many things beside, show 
what was once the substance or material of man's 
business, become but a relic of his youth, or the 



DESTINY. 357 

harmless entertainment of his leisure. I can only 
hint at a few of the indications of this tendency in 
the world to peace. The very expression, which 
has grown into a proverb of freedom in England and 
America, — that every man's house is his castle, — 
has evidently descended from times when every 
man's house contained the implements of destruc- 
tion, to be thereby defended, and might at any time 
have to be made good against actual attack. It is 
one of the curiosities of the traveller to observe and 
marvel at so many dwellings whose lower openings 
are grated, like the doors and windows of prisons, 
to make an impassable barrier between those without 
and within. 

Whereto, then, are we all going in this world ? 
Remarking, as a moral geologist, the drift of hu- 
man affairs, as it is notched by centuries on the face 
of the earth, I answer, "To peace." "What!" 
many may exclaim, " in the face of existing horrors 
of war assert a tendency to peace ! " Yes : that is the 
tendency. It is not yet fully realized, I am quite 
aware ; but the very fact that war, once the pastime of 
men, is full of horrors, and now shocks the conscience 
of mankind, shows the tendency ; and it is a great 
comfort to have war turned from the occupation of men 
to an occasional outbreak. I am not deceived, and cer- 
tainly would not deceive, by a mere picture, or by the 
varying aspect of the case in the countenance and 
complexion of strife. I know very well that part of 
the alteration is in the means and weapons of war- 
fare ; that the apparatus of destruction was never 



358 DESTINY. 

so perfect or terribly effective as now ; that slaying 
human beings, like government and theology, is 
now a science, whose skill may be an ambiguous 
exchange for the honest passions of combat ; that 
the ancients, with all their chariots and elephants 
and coats of mail for man and beast, had nothing to 
equal a steamship of war or the long reach of the 
modern artillery and rifle ; though, even in this 
respect, I take it as one signal of the wit of man 
being directed to something better than the achieve- 
ments of battle, that the finest Oriental tempering of 
a steel blade is said to be among the lost arts. 
Among the lost arts let it be ! 

As regards, too, the fearful conflict going on be- 
twixt the mightiest powers of Europe, I must say, 
further, that in the first reluctance for the contest ; 
in the subsequent and incessant treaties and diplo- 
matic propositions extended on all sides to transfer, 
if possible, the debate from the battle-field to the 
Council-chamber, — a spectacle never seen in barba- 
rous times ; in the divided opinions, in the public 
mind, as to the necessity of the war on either hand, 
— division on a moral question never existing in a 
savage clan ; in the small degree of moral glory that 
can accrue to the plainly selfish policy of any or all 
of the combatants ; whether the strife issue in favor 
of one contending host or another, and however it 
affect the spread of barbarian territory, or keep open 
the ways of trade, to make Egypt the causeway of 
commerce to the East ; in the difficulty which Chris- 
tian moralists must feel to find a complete justifica- 



DESTINY. 859 

tion for a single party in the matter ; in the different 
sentiments, even in the parliamentary debates of by 
far the noblest nation involved ; in unnatural alli- 
ances and offered mediations ; in good things alike 
with the posture of bad ones, — we see blessed signs 
at least that the first fair opportunity will be seized, 
as the moral sense of mankind demands it should, 
for conciliation. The kingdoms of Europe cannot 
be so foolish and wicked, so Heaven-defying and 
contradictory to God's word and man's destiny, as, 
for a series of years, to pour out their best blood and 
treasure for mutual annihilation, effecting nothing 
worthy such terrible cost. As at sea, after the storm 
is spent, will sometimes come, far along the surface 
of the deep, a solitary billow, that almost oversets 
the vessel ; so the great tempest of battle on this 
earth is really in the background, half exhausted on 
the distant monstrous tide, and this present commo- 
tion only from one mighty surge, which shall have 
but few successors. In fact, the business of fighting 
has been already over-done ; and, spite of temporary 
convulsions, must slacken. The evident holding back 
is an augury of cessation, — of the world's weari- 
ness, as it may well be weary, of bloodshed. There 
will never be three men again like Alexander, 
Csesar, and Napoleon, to the ambition of each of 
whom, it is calculated, was offered the holocaust of 
two millions of men, or six millions in all, falling 
for them and their policies, under the edge of war. 
The demon of war himself, moreover, already greatly 
wounded with the very sharpness of his own dagger, 



360 DESTINY. 

will at length commit suicide ; for, when invention 
shall have improved the instruments of murder to 
the utmost, they cannot, for mere extermination, be 
used. Like some individuals in the East, who, in 
sober reason or with deficient valor, have turned 
back from the awful jeopardy to which they were 
sent, nations, with wise discretion or a wholesome 
fear, will recoil from the barbarous meeting in fire 
and blood. The duel between man and man, that 
brutal custom which has fastened itself so deep and 
wide and long on the human soul, shows symptoms 
here in our sight of giving way before the combined 
feelings of right and ridicule. So the truly no less 
vulgar duel between peoples, — save only in defence 
of country, hearth, and home, when it is right, in 
the eye of God, — in these days more and more ad- 
judged a folly and immorality, must make room for 
that tendency, which is the divine will and word of 
peace. 

If this be the tendency, the actual word of God, 
then every quarrelsome person, everybody in this 
age who provokes dissension, on a great scale or a 
small one, is gainsaying his Maker, and undertaking 
the awful and absurd responsibility of setting him- 
self against the destiny of his kind. The best that 
can be said for war is, that it may be a needful step 
in the character and transition in the progress of the 
race. Being disposed to mete out ample justice to 
the warrior, — who may have in him a noble spirit, as 
he does the sometimes necessary work of contending 
against unjust and malignant foes, — I must yet 



DESTINY. 361 

maintain, that, in the diversities of excellence, the 
warrior can never touch the very highest grade. It 
is not in the nature of his work and struggle that he 
should. The martyr, who bears witness to the truth, 
and has nothing to do with carnal weapons but to 
sink under them as a willing sacrifice to his chosen 
duty of enlightening and saving the human soul; 
the saint, who purges his spirit with the constant 
severities of self-denial, which are more virtuous than 
any personal exposure, and who lifts himself with 
solemnities of faith and prayer ; the lover of his 
kind, who burns with disinterested desire to do good 
to his fellow-men of every kindred and color and 
tribe, because his fellow-men they are, and that rela- 
tionship is grander to him than all beside, — these 
all are above the warrior in the very type of their 
goodness ; are on the higher rounds, though he may 
be on the lower ones, of that ladder which rests on 
earth and reaches up to heaven. I cannot help re- 
garding it as to the honor of our own Washington 
that he could never be a mere soldier, in which light 
he may be criticized, and that we cannot regard him 
as such now. Thank God for every omen and hope, 
that the higher type will supersede, and ever more 
widely assert precedence of, the inferior ! For, not 
doubting the providential necessity of conflict here 
below ; not doubting that many implicated in it are 
more worthy than many others who never lifted their 
hand, or had courage to strike a blow ; not doubting 
that there may be in those differences of administra- 
tions, of which an apostle speaks, a common spirit, — 

31 



S62 DESTINY. 

must not so much be granted by all, that we can 
hardly imagine the most exalted quality, like that of 
Jesus or John, engaged and exulting in the muster 
of hosts or the shock of arms ? 

But, in fine, it is not in a tendency simply to 
peace on earth, as the word of God and destiny of 
man, that we are to rejoice ; but because peace is 
union ; because peace produces the arts of peace, in 
every shape of industry and commerce. The Jews 
had no dealings with the Samaritans, inasmuch as 
between the Jews and the Samaritans was hostility. 
They could not trade, because they hated. Peace is 
intercourse, is good understanding, is mutual friend- 
ship, among the nations of the world. Who shall 
describe its consequences, in wealth, comfort, and 
improvement, as opposed to the poverty, distress, 
and demoralization of war ? There does not seem 
externally to be so much activity, there is not so 
much noisy movement, in peace as in war ; but there 
is an inward and more benign activity. The bruised 
and wounded body was more active in the fray than 
it is when lying still upon the couch; but, under 
the outward stillness, what beneficent operations are 
going on, — the lacerated fibres knit together; the 
exhausted nerves rallying their strength ; the blood- 
vessels refilled with the vital current, propelled to 
all points ; and every spent organ of life rising, un- 
seen, with new vigor to build up the frame and pro- 
long the lease of existence ! So is it with this old, 
bruised, and wounded world, that has bled so freely 
and unstanched in battle. Peace for it is union; 



DESTINY. 363 

peace is the parent of concord and strength in its 
frame. There is splendid excitement, a showy glory, 
a grand report, in many of its wars, as history dis- 
plays them ; but, long torn with them, it yearns for 
peace. It would fain lie still from fierce and savage 
encounters ; but its stillness is not stoppage or sloth. 
The fibres it tenderly puts forth to heal divisions are 
in all these modes of intercommunication, the praise 
of which is on every tongue ; in every dusty avenue 
or iron path ; in every vessel that sails with goods to 
and fro, bearing thoughts and sympathetic ideas also ; 
in every loom that, as the shuttle flies to and fro, 
weaves men's hearts together ; in every stroke of 
productive labor, creating life and happiness and 
good-will, with the fruits of the earth or the textures 
of the workshop ; in every foreign language that is 
learned and spoken, every tongue that is translated, 
every traveller among the millions that travel; in 
every letter by the ocean-post ; in the very concep- 
tion of a decimal coinage, common to all lands, 
which could have arisen in no other age, but has a 
moral and political meaning now ; and in every 
electric wire, submarine, subterranean, air-drawn, to 
connect distant territories and ocean-sundered states, 
like a living nerve reaching from the brain to the 
heart and hands ; as though, verily, the cold, rocky, 
earthy globe itself had heart and brain and hands ! 
Mountains interposed, if there be no other cause, 
shall " make enemies of nations " never more. But 
peace, fertile, busy peace, the word of God, the 
blessing of man, shall bind all the members of hu- 



364 DESTINY. 

manity together for tokens of mutual affection and 
labors of universal charity. Then the human des- 
tiny or word of God, whose intent we seek, shall com- 
pass its perfect fulfilment in religion, — the world's 
worship of the Most High, in the name of Him, who, 
though he brought a sword, is himself the Prince of 
Peace. Among arms, said the Homan author, laws 
are silent. Among arms, we may add, the temples 
of prayer are voiceless. The fight rages, as we 
hear, on the sabbath, whose songs cannot rise till its 
clangor goes down. Then the world's history will 
run into its destiny. 

Whether, however, this idea of the course of hu- 
man affairs be an intellectual vision or but a baseless 
dream ; nevertheless, to every observant traveller, the 
great question will be that of the destiny of his race. 
The myriad objects he has seen on his way may 
come back only in magnificent confusion to his 
memory, — halls and towers, hills and streams, mixed 
together, — and he may find his thoughts of all these 
things like a tumultuous and wayward flock, which 
the driver, seeing one after another of them run hither 
and thither, finds it hard to keep in any order to- 
gether ; but, in the steady line and progress of all 
his other mutually changeful meditations, one reflec- 
tion will stand forth, touching the destiny of his 
kind. Many shows and performances, in his route 
through the world, will successively attract his re- 
gard and kindle his admiration, or fill his soul with 
an exquisite, temporary delight ; but they will one by 
one subside, leaving this single inquiry: "For what 



DESTINY. 365 

were my fellow-creatures made ? and whither am I, 
with them , going ? " Upon an extensive journey, that 
will very probably happen, which not seldom with 
serious persons takes place on the journey of life ; 
namely, a decay of interest in all particular spec- 
tacles and displays, however bright and imposing, 
and a gradual accumulation of concern upon the 
spiritual realities of our existence. Through our 
years of childhood and youth, long do we play or 
struggle with the gay pomps and ever-shifting re- 
presentations that occupy the stage of life ; but 
at length the mind, with much sore experience 
grown sharp-eyed and earnest, wishes to penetrate 
beneath the appearance. First conquered by, it 
would fain at last conquer, the world. As, with the 
siren look and swimming motion of the sea, the 
nervous system is at the beginning overcome and 
prostrated, but afterwards by degrees rises to com- 
mand and preside over the billows' glittering roll ; 
so the heart, yielding at the outset to earthly sights 
and seductions, would finally behold and govern 
them by a law. That there is a law, too, for these 
other fluctuations of life, all who do not doubt of 
every thing must believe. That the law is gracious, 
all must believe who do not deny that Sovereign 
Mercy reigns. Let any, who will, entitle the law by 
names different from those that have occurred in my 
poor language. What all our names and thoughts 
strive to signify, let us toil and pray that God wilL 
fulfil to the good of every one of his creatures. 
On the entablature of an ancient gateway, lead- 

31* 



366 DESTINY. 

ing towards a resting-place for the dead, I read an 
inscription, in which the soul is sublimely celebrated 
as swperstes corpori caduco, — surviving the frail 
body. The inscription itself was old ; its line in 
the stone was crumbling away ; but it transferred 
itself to my mind as fresh as it first fell centuries 
ago from the graver's chisel. Day after day it re- 
peated its simple words, and rose up in my recollec- 
tion thousands of miles from the spot it hallowed 
with honor for mortal dust, and hope for man's spirit. 
Unnumbered times since, at home, it has been the 
mental refrain in those pleasant, voiceless songs of 
faith, which, in quiet hours, we sing in our own 
thoughts. At the conclusion of my work, I take a 
hint from the antique sentence that so pursued me. 
The traveller passes lightly over the world, convers- 
ing with its ephemeral things ; and often, in his report 
of his experience, he passes as lightly over his own 
thoughts, leaving their main current below, as the 
bulk of the ocean lies under his vessel's keel. Be- 
neath the gay and bantering tone of his conversa- 
tion, or his correspondence through the press, only 
glimpses may be caught of this unfathomed sea of 
sober feeling. He may have a boyish shame, that 
keeps him from telling how often his mind from afar 
turns homeward, — and it may be heavenward too. 
He laughs over with us the events of his course ; 
but has he not also mused and prayed as he paced 
some narrow deck, or gazed into the cloudy sky from 
the porch-window of some foreign dwelling, or lay 
in the watches of the night upon his lonely bed, 



DESTINY. 367 

while the storm swept the roof-tree ? Has he not 
marvelled, as in broad day he rode along with his 
companions, to find his attention and talk with them 
occupied, not upon the charms and grandeurs of the 
way, but about friends and acquaintances living on 
the distant shore, or dead since he departed, — their 
souls landed, as he trusts, on some upper coast ? 
Among the other revelations of his journey, how 
surely he learns that all external things, which 
seize upon his curiosity, after a while loosen their 
hold, and a time comes when eloquence can no 
longer charm, nor beauty win, nor pleasure please ! 
If sickness or sorrow fall upon him, even " the grass- 
hopper shall be a burden; and desire shall fail," 
unless it be fixed upon something higher than the 
earth. In this I do not preach a homily, but appeal 
to the traveller's own sincere consciousness. If he 
be honest, how freely he will confess that whatever 
immortal faith and hope he finds to feed on in his 
familiar abiding-place, supply him with a more satis- 
fying nourishment than he has derived from all the 
wonders of the world ! If he disguise not his con- 
victions, he will own that all the sun includes in its 
circle is not so much to him as the sense of these 
few words, Superstes corpori caduco. 

Travelling upon one of the great railways abroad, 
as we came to a long, dark tunnel, which, on 
our entering it, shut out the whole extent of the 
bright and blooming world, I observed, that, while 
the light of day was fading and flying off through the 
windows of the swiftly rolling car, some other light, 



368 DESTINY. 

till then unnoticed, poured forth its rays, till it 
illumined the whole space which, with our fellow- 
passengers, we occupied. It was the flame of a 
lamp, hanging out of sight over our heads, but com- 
ing into use in time of need. So, in the dark pas- 
sages of mortal life, where the lustre of worldly- 
prosperity vanishes away, beams of comfort from 
above, which before we never saw, and perhaps had 
never believed in, visit our gloom, and cheer us in 
our desolation. They are the dayspring from on 
high ; they are the dawn of another morning upon 
all our nights of earthly darkness ; they are the 
true and lively harbingers of our human destiny. 

One thing is plain, — that no traveller of sensibi- 
lity would be happy in the thought of things in the 
world remaining for ever as they are. Be the pil- 
grim's philosophy of human nature and human life 
what it may, his heart must often, on his way, yearn 
to agree with those who believe in the final and uni- 
versal triumph of good. At many a point of his 
journey, as he looks and passes on, he must cry out, in 
love for man and prayer to God, " It will not always 
be so. These enslaved races, these oppressed nations, 
will not lie for ever under their heavy yoke." That 
unequalled Hungarian band, I heard play their ex- 
quisite tunes in such magical concord of diverse in- 
struments, blowing their strong and skilful breath to 
please their present masters, as the mocked Hebrews 
sang to their Babylonish lords the songs of Zion, 
will some time answer to their own heroic leader's 
longing, and otherwise more gloriously employ their 



DESTINY. 869 

genius and skill. Those poor conscripts, I saw trail- 
ing towards Eastern battle-fields their gun-carriages 
and military stores, will be released from their hard 
and terrible business, — the present actors by the 
stern, kind sergeant of death ; and their posterity by 
an improved humanity among men, who are not to 
be so cheap or hateful in one another's eyes ever- 
lastingly. Those sailors, who are so worn out in 
toils and watches by night, amid the chilling, misty, 
and fiercely foaming elements, — that, instead of a 
whole, they have to themselves scarcely more than 
half a human generation for their lives, — must 
somewhere have compensation, for this waste and 
suffering, in a lengthened term. Those women, des- 
tined in their nature to softer duties of inspiring good 
affections, in some future and better age will not, in 
their lineal representatives, be seen sweating their 
almost bloody sweat under the blazing sun which I 
beheld beat upon them in the far Austrian fields. 
Surely an era shall come, even on this earth, when 
those sad-eyed German and Italian children will no 
longer run for the mile beside the traveller's car- 
riage, each with the mournful-sounding petition, " I 
pray you, give me one kreutzer ! " or, " Something, 
I entreat of you, for the sake of charity ! " — request 
than which nothing could ha ye a form and phrase 
more touching and beautiful. May I add, that the 
host of travellers themselves will not for ever make 
their not unfrequently painful and tedious search 
after delight ; but there will arise other scenes upon 
other journeys, where, as the simple savage said, 



370 DESTINY. 

a there will be no more snow " ? Low and wretched 
as man appears when we contemplate the worse ten- 
dencies and ghastly facts of life, to one who looked 
at the primeval earth, given up to enormous vegeta- 
ble growths or to animal wildness, any anticipation of 
the state even now of man would have been a reveal- 
ing of wonderful and incredible glory. How can 
eye or ear or heart help us to foresee or understand 
that lot, exalted with a difference still grander than 
any yet manifest in terrestrial history, which for the 
immortal creature we hope ! 

In the refectory of the Church of Santa Maria, at 
Milan, is Leonardo da Vinci's original picture of the 
Last Supper. One who is familiar with the engrav- 
ings of it, so common, and has not been aware of 
the condition of the painting, is surprised and sorrow- 
struck to see what a faded ruin it is. But the mar- 
vellous part, the central figure, still holds much of 
its pristine grandeur and beauty. Through the dim 
hues and broken lines of the perishing wall that 
holds it, the face of the Lord, amid his disciples, 
gleams out with a lustre of divine benignity, that 
seems indestructible, and essentially independent of 
the earthy materials in which it is now so faintly 
embodied. There is, indeed, in it a peculiar glory, 
almost wholly spiritual, that is retained in no copy, 
and appears to be related to the colors and propor- 
tions of art only as the sun is to the beams that flow 
from his urn, but from which he himself draws 
nothing. Gazing, we feel that the Sun of Righteous- 
ness wanes not with the decay of the material por- 



DESTINY. 371 

trait in which it is represented. It is a heavenly 
vision fading away ; it is the godlike Man, whose 
countenance, unheld upon any surface of stone or 
canvas, and to* mortal sight left imperfect, — as the 
artist told his ducal patron it must be, because he 
could not fully realize its celestial beauty, — shines 
yet with rays unquenchable in the believer's heart. 
That countenance is the brightest dawn of hope that 
ever rose upon the human race. It is the announce- 
ment and promise of a destiny sublimer and more 
blessed than, in its infirmity of ignorance and sin, 
the soul of man might have ventured to expect. 
There is no argument for our futurity, no picture of 
immortality, upon which that countenance does not 
throw light. 



THE GUIDE. 



Through transatlantic lands, for safer guiding 
To every spot of covert beauty's hiding, 
The traveller, after Nature's marvels chasing, 
Has leaders all his path before him tracing ; — 

And guides unearthly, to the mind appearing, 
Its course through more than fleshly perils cheering, 
The pilgrim's doubts in light mysterious solving, 
Dark questions end he long had been revolving. 

Thus o'er the sea, as slumbers turned to dreaming, — 
That so mocks real life with vivid seeming, — 
On spectral journeys, e'en in rest advancing, 
I saw in prospect hills and rivers glancing : 

When, lo ! a hand I feel my steps arresting, 
And hear a strange, dumb, ghostly voice, requesting 
My quick return, the track unfinished leaving ; 
Whereat my soul, as in a swoon, sank grieving. 

Wide through the world's eclipse again outreaching, 
That vision of the night repeats its teaching ; 
With sense of baffled will vague sorrow feeding, 
My waking wit to understand exceeding. 
32 



374 THE GUIDE. 

Would earth or sky disclose for me a meaning ? 
"Were angel-forms or mortal towards me leaning ? 
What summons thus subdued me to obeying 
A shadow in my moving or my staying ? 

Ah, shadow cast from life remote, retreating ! 
Ah, cry from kindred heart more slowly beating ! 

God ! so distantly could I be learning 

For sight of me its fond and frequent yearning ? 

Was spirit's ear, so fine, from spirit hearing 
The whisper of a soft and tender fearing, 
Lest never more should come, in earth's beholding, 
What lay so deep within the bosom's folding ? 

Where'er I went, went still the dream pursuing, — 
My daily thoughts the nightly show reviewing ; 
While nought I knew, howe'er I strove at knowing, 
But only as it urged my feet were going. 

Mystic conductor humbly not refusing, 
Homeward I blindly sped, no moment losing ; 
For solemn tidings at my door confessing 
To what I owed affection's farewell blessing. 

Benignant guide ! with lamp the gloom outshining, 
And rod so sure my truest aim divining, 
Gladly all splendors of this world's alluring 

1 pay for love's last tones and looks assuring ! 

Oft, high above our wisdom's comprehending, 
Come dream-like calls to holy duties tending ; 
Whose dictate, followed from our inmost feeling, 
Shall clearly shine in mercy's great revealing. 



THE ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 



BY I. T. TALBOT, M.D. 



THE ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 



Mountain-climbing has now become so common 
among laymen, as well as professional rovers, that 
the wonderful adventures and hair-breadth escapes 
of the last half-century are almost unheard of to- 
day ; or, if repeated, are only smiled at as the inex- 
perience of juveniles, or the weakness of senility. 
Mountains have either very much decreased in size, 
or our ideas of their grandeur have undergone a 
radical change. Why ! Mount Washington, that 
giant mountain, a few years since was far outside 
the bounds of civilization ; and the first ascent of it 
was heralded by all the journals of the country, and 
would have drawn to the daring individual, who 
performed the feat, a life-pension from government, 
were it not that republics are ungrateful. Now it 
has become a fashionable place of resort for our 
nature-loving citizens when they wish to avoid the 
i( melting mood ; " and rival hotels at the summit seat 
their crowds of visitors at sumptuous dinners. The 
iscent is made with scarce an hour's forethought, 
uid becomes a morning ride or an afternoon ramble. 

32* 



378 ASCENT j OF MONT BLANC. 

Smaller mountains have sunk into insignificance ; and 
few would think of going to the top of Wachusett, 
Monadnock, or Kiarsarge, and reporting that they 
had ascended a mountain. Mount Vesuvius, that 
entrance to Hades, or workshop of Vulcan, as one 
may choose to call it, is the place for sick people to 
visit when they wish to take a sulphur-bath on a 
grand scale ; to feel the actual motion of the earth ; 
to see eggs or potatoes roasted in the ground ; or to 
get impressions, from the molten rock rolling along 
at their feet, of coins which are skilfully extracted 
from their pockets by the ingenious beggars. 'Tis a 
pleasant way of spending a day. 

Mont Blanc itself has diminished in magnitude 
by the constant efforts of the guides " good and 
faithful." The goat-path has been cleared of some 
of its rolling stones ; the ladder has climbed to the 
last point of land, and given its name to the Pierre 
de l'Echelle, where it rests from its labors from 
year to year ; and the stone hovel has been replaced 
by the Hotel des Grands Mulets. Above this, the 
"bald, awful head" remains conservative to all hu- 
man influences, and only yields to the progressive 
changes of the descending snow, or the mighty, fall- 
ing avalanches. The names can now be reckoned of 
nearly half a hundred who have stood upon its sum- 
mit ; and if the signs of the times be correct, ere 
the close of the present century, not scores, but thou- 
sands, will have gazed upon the grandest, most varied, 
magnificent, and illimitable scene which Nature, in 
her richest profusion, presents to mortal vision. 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 379 

Physical, like mental elevation, when unattended by 
fear, does in itself afford an indescribable sensation 
of pleasure. High up above the dust and grovel- 
ling passions of the lower earth, one seems to breathe 
a purer, lighter atmosphere, unpolluted by the sins 
and miseries of humanity. Never yet have I stood 
in such a position that I have not felt myself made 
better by it, — more thankful to our Father for the 
many blessings he has bestowed, the many beauties 
he has scattered over the earth, and the pre-eminent 
pleasure we may feel in our power of enjoying them. 
As my eye has wandered over the beautiful land- 
scape, wide-spread beneath me, my mind has involun- 
tarily ascended to find itself nearer the great First 
Cause. Pleasant is it to see others like myself en- 
joying mountain-scenery, even in its wildest and 
strangest phases ; and, since there is at present such 
a decided upward tendency, each one should do 
something to improve the path for those next suc- 
ceeding. 

It is for this purpose, and perhaps to furnish re- 
miniscences to those who have already made the trip, 
or an hour of pleasure to those who have not, and 
will not, that I transcribe some of the occurrences of 
the pleasantest excursion of my life, which, though 
not entirely devoid of danger, presented far less than 
I had always imagined, and than the popular mind 
attributes to it. 

The ascent of Mont Blanc had been a cherished 
idea with me from early childhood ; the origin of 
which might perhaps be traced to Saussure's graphic 



380 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

account of his adventures, which I chanced to find in 
"A Book of Travels and Travellers." The picture 
accompanying it perhaps added to the impression. 
It represented a man clinging by his hands to the 
edge of a terrible precipice, while none of his com- 
panions seemed to care for him ; and, farther on, two 
men, at the top of an inaccessible point of ice, were 
pulling up a third by means of a rope. But how the 
first ever got there without wings, was 'a mystery to 
me. Later, Pococke and Windham's description of 
Chamouni and the Glaciers came in my way ; and 
my enthusiasm was not decreased by the brilliant ac- 
counts of more recent travellers which I read from 
time to time. An interview with the celebrated Dr. 
Hamel, whose attempted ascent in 1820 terminated 
so fatally, gave me much information regarding the 
trip ; and, notwithstanding the sadness which settled 
on his brow as he referred to the poor lost guides, I 
determined to make the ascent at my earliest oppor- 
tunity. 

My first view of the " monarch of mountains " 
was the glorious one which bursts upon the vision 
from the summit of the Col de Balme. Surrounded 
by its Aiguilles, placed like sentinels at fixed dis- 
tances, it rears its head high above all else ; and yet 
even here it did not seem of such immense magni- 
tude as one would suppose from its actual height. 
Still greater was the disappointment when it was 
seen from the valley of Chamouni. The Dome de 
Goute, a nearer and much smaller mountain, seems 
the larger, and is often mistaken by strangers for. the 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 381 

crowned monarch of the hills. The Aiguille du 
Midi, too, from its apparent height and form, looks 
as though it might be a spire to this mighty dome. 

Time had passed so rapidly amid the enchanting 
scenery of the Tyrol, that I was absolutely com- 
pelled to limit my journeyings in Switzerland to a 
very few days. There was no time for carefully ob- 
serving the barometer ; none for a long preparation ; 
hardly enough for the trip : and, even upon the spot, 
I felt that I should be obliged to relinquish the 
project I had for years so earnestly contemplated. 
Many were the long and lingering looks of disap- 
pointment and regret which I cast toward the sum- 
mit ; but all to no purpose. It neither seemed to 
beckon to me nor nod its head in recognition of me, 
but remained as stolid and indifferent as though I 
had never given it a passing thought. The first two 
days at Chamouni were spent in making the usual 
trips to the Glaciers, the Cascades du Dard and des 
Pelerins, the source of the Arveiron, Montanvert, 
the Mer de Glace, and the strange and beautiful 
Jardin. It is not a light day's work to go to the 
Jardin, and return ; yet I wonder that so large a pro- 
portion of the strong, healthful, nature-loving, sight- 
seems: visitors of Chamouni should fail to make this 
trip, so replete with beauty, wildness, and adven- 
ture. The perpendicular mountain, against which 
we pressed ourselves and made our way, a hundred 
feet above the glacier, with scarce three inches foot- 
ing, dignified by the name of bridge, — Le Petit 
and Le Grand Pont ; the mighty Mer de Glace, with 



382 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

its transfixed waves, from crest to crest of which 
we went, skipping, Switzer-like, aided by our long 
batons and the invigorating air which came fresh 
down the valley ; Le Moulin, with its raging waters 
of unknown depth ; the Couvercle, covered and 
partly formed by the immense mass of debris 
brought down by the glacier ; then the Glacier du 
Talefre, with its waves bright blue and sparkling ; 
and, a little farther, the Jardin itself, with its daisies, 
wild-flowers, and bright-green grass, situated in the 
midst of a sea of ice, and protected by lofty moun- 
tains, down whose precipitous sides the ice came 
tumbling in vast avalanches, but never touching the 
consecrated spot, — all have associations which can- 
not be forgotten by one who has once seen them. 

As I lay upon the grass, contemplating the wild 
scene around me, — the Mer de Glace, with its 
waves glittering in the sunlight many hundred feet 
below ; on the right the forked Aiguille des Char- 
moz, and on the left the Grandes Jorasses ; directly 
in front the long, unbroken surface of the Glacier 
du Tacul, which seemed one grand highway up the 
side of Mont Blanc ; with the mountain itself, seen 
best from this position, now towering above every 
thing else, and showing its true grandeur, — all 
these urged me to carry out my original intention. 
I had no power to resist ; and, turning to my 
guide, I asked him if he would go with me to the 
summit on the following day. An emphatic " Oui, 
monsieur," and eyes sparkling with pleasure at the 
very thought, settled the matter with him at once. 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 383 

Seeking the other guides, of whom there were some 
ten or twelve on the Jardin, accompanying a still 
larger number of Englishmen, I chose the finest- 
looking of their number for my chief guide, who 
proved to be the famous David Couttet, noted for 
his coolness and excellent judgment; and I had no 
reason to regret my choice. To him I intrusted all 
the care of choosing the other guides, directing only 
that they should be of perfectly sober habits ; and 
four braver, more active, and faithful fellows never 
trod the mountain-side.* 

When my determination was made known to the 
company, they greeted me most cordially ; and dif- 
ference of nationality interposed no barrier to the 
interchange of the most friendly feeling. " God save 
the Queen " and tc Hail Columbia " were sung with 
united voices ; and the mountains echoed back the 
strains with a peculiar sweetness. They then drank 
to my health, and success in the undertaking. 

At rapid speed we hastened back to the village to 
make preparations for the following day. The 
lengthened shadows of the Brevent had already co- 
vered the valley ; and the sunlight was rapidly creep- 
ing up the side of the mountain, as if to show me 
the easiest manner of ascent. I had little time for 
moralizing or admiring. A single night was left for 
completing our outfit; which consisted of clothing 
of extra thickness, overcoats, boots fitted with iron 

* The names of these guides were David Couttet, Alexander Devouassoud, 
Francis Tournet, and Francois Simond ; either one of whom would have risked 
his own life to save mine. I must particularly recommend Tournet to any one 
who wants a cool, active, and daring guide. 



384 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 



nails, fur collars, ear-pieces, mittens, green veils, 
blue spectacles, knapsacks, ropes, ice-axes, Alpen 
stocks, and all the et cateras of the journey. The 
hostess of the Hotel de la Couronne, where I stopped, 
one of the faithful family of Tairraz, from whom 
I received many kindnesses during my sojourn, at 
once put all the culinary department of the establish- 
ment into active service, and prepared every thing to 
the entire satisfaction of the party. 

Government compels every traveller to have no 
less than four guides ; and each of these, as well as 
the traveller, must have a porter to accompany him 
as far as the Grands Mulets. It requires no small 
quantity of provisions to supply ten strong, healthy 
men, violently laboring for two or three days amid 
the glaciers. The following is a list of the princi- 
pal edibles packed into the knapsacks : — 



6 Large Loaves of Bread. 
2 Quarters of Roast Veal. 

2 Legs of Roast Mutton. 
1 Boiled Ham. 

3 Boiled Tongues. 

1 Large Piece of Roast Beef. 
12 Chickens. 

2 Turkeys. 

5 Lbs. Chocolate. 



6 Lbs. Sugar. 
4 Lbs. Figs. 
4 Lbs. Raisins. 

3 Lbs. Dates. 
12 Lemons. 

4 Bottles Bourdeaux. 
10 Bottles Vin Ordinaire. 

1 Small Cask of Vin Ordinaire. 
1 Bottle Brandy. 



Besides these, there were numerous other articles, 
such as the guides thought necessary, convenient, or 
palatable. The small cask of wine was for the din- 
ner at the Pierre de l'Echelle ; and the bottle of 
brandy was returned unopened. The trip usually 
occupies three days, and is made by reaching the 
Grands Mulets the first, spending the night there, 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 385 

going to the summit and back the second, and re- 
turning to the village the third day. This is making 
easy work of it. But, being pressed for time, I re- 
solved, that, at farthest, it should not occupy more 
than two days. Still it was necessary to have a good 
supply of provisions ; and, from the state of the 
weather, we came near needing it all. 

There was not much sleep for our party that night ; 
and the next morning, as we collected together, we 
found that a cloud had been thrown over our pros- 
pects, as it had over the tops of the mountains. The 
weather, which for some weeks had been clear, was 
now cloudy ; the barometer, which had stood at 
"fair weather" on the preceding evening, was now 
at " variable ; " and no shaking of the instrument 
by the guides would change its position. Light, 
fleecy clouds floated up and down the mountain-side ; 
and no breath from us, no wishes or entreaties, moved 
them. After watching and waiting a long time, the 
guides, anxious for the ascent, decided that it was 
clearing off; that the clouds were moving up the 
mountain, and it would be safe to proceed at once. 
Packing up as quickly as possible, when such was the 
word of command, at half-past eight, on the morning 
of the 25th August, 1854, we commenced the line of 
march on an expedition whose difficulties I little un- 
derstood, and whose dangers had been greatly exag- 
gerated. I confess to some slight misgivings as I 
placed a package of letters and papers in the hands 
rf my friend, Mr. Beck, of Boston, and, with all the 
nonchalance possible, told him he must dispose of 

33 



386 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

them according to circumstances. All fears vanished 
as we heard our footsteps on the bridge of the vil- 
lage, and felt ourselves really on the way. But soon 
our fears changed to another direction. " 'Tis rain- 
ing, as I'm alive ! " " Never mind ; 'tis only a 
shower. We are in for it now : we have started, 
and must not turn back." So on we go, through 
woods, over rocks, up, up, up the steep sides of the 
mountain. When seemingly above all human habi- 
tation, the tinkling of cow-bells and a shepherd's 
voice told us that we were not entirely alone. Here 
we were at the Chalet de la Para, a miserable hut, at 
which, during the summer season, an old herdsman 
lives, tending his flock, and spending his time in 
knitting stockings and making cheese. We stopped 
to rest ourselves and talk with the old man, who told 
us that many summers he had passed four or five 
months here without seeing a single person with 
whom he could speak. He gave us some nice warm 
whey to drink, and butter and eggs to take to the 
Grands Mulets. As he declined accepting money, 
we offered him a bottle of wine in return ; but even 
this he refused, saying that in the summer he never 
drank any thing stronger than the whey which he 
had in abundance. We gave him our thanks, and in 
exchange received his a Dieu, and kindest wishes 
for our success and safe return on the morrow. 

Our pathway now ran over a rocky and uneven 
surface, formed by the debris of the Glacier des Bos- 
sons. The two large glaciers, des Bossons and du 
Taconnay, extend from Mont Blanc to the valley of 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 387 

Chamouni. Between these is a long ridge of rocks 
and earth, — the accumulation of centuries, — which 
is called Montagne de la Cote. It was by this route 
that all the earlier ascents were made ; and at its 
upper extremity still exist the ruins of the old 
cabin, erected at so much labor and expense for the 
celebrated Saussure, previous to his ascent in 1787. 
This route is now abandoned on account of its 
greater danger and difficulty, and the one to the left 
of the Glacier des Bossons is adopted in preference. 
This is over a ridge which extends to, and forms the 
buttress of, the Aiguille du Midi. 

Soon after leaving the chalet, we came to the last 
signs of vegetation ; and here all hands set to work 
to gather firewood from the dried branches of the 
stunted firs which grow even here. A little farther 
on, we came to the Pierre Pontue, a jutting rock, 
with a very narrow path, overhanging a precipice of 
a thousand or more feet in depth. Down far, far 
below, is heard the roar of the mighty waters which 
the glacier is pressing onward. Now you climb 
over the sharp rocks, piled on each other, and feel 
them give way beneath your feet : again, as you 
creep along the perpendicular side of some huge 
rock, with scarce an inch of footing, you wonder 
that your feet remain so firm. But nobody thinks 
of fear here ; for every one gets safely over. Still a 
little farther, and we have the Pierre de l'Echelle, 
the last point of land. 

The rain had continued at intervals during the 
ascent, sometimes in gentle drops or pelting show- 



388 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

ers ; or, as it ceased, the up-lifting clouds displayed 
through the gracefully curling waves the checkered 
fields of the valley many thousand feet beneath. 
Some English friends, who had accompanied me thus 
far, were enraptured by the beautiful scenery which 
Nature was thus coquettishly displaying ; and they 
now, too late, regretted that they had not made pre- 
parations to accompany me to the summit. Protect- 
ed somewhat from the severe storm, still raging, by 
the generous old rock, we dined, and parted with 
many regrets, — I, that I should be alone ; they, that 
they must lose the still more beautiful sights in 
advance. From underneath the old rock the trust- 
worthy ladder was drawn out ; wet knapsacks were 
adjusted to still wetter backs ; and the firewood was 
broken up, and put into the most compact manner 
possible. Soon after leaving the Pierre de l'Echelle, 
we came upon the Glacier des Bossons ; when sud- 
denly the rain changed to hail, and the clouds set- 
tled about us thick and dark, as if to defeat our pur- 
pose. Crossing the glacier in every direction are 
immense crevasses, from five to fifty feet in width, 
with a depth of which we could only judge by the 
long-continued clinking of the blocks of ice which 
we dropped into them. "We were often obliged to 
make long detours to avoid these ; and the advan- 
tages of hob-nailed shoes became apparent as we 
walked upon the very brink of a crevasse with all 
the feeling of security we could have had upon the 
solid land. "We were now in the wildest and most 
beautiful part of the glacier, as I found on my re- 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 389 

turn on the following day. Whoever thinks that in 
the Mer de Glace he has seen one of Nature's wild- 
est freaks, can have little conception of this place. 
Yawning on every side are the immense, unfathoma- 
ble crevasses, with their deep-blue edges. Above 
them tower lofty masses, with long, pendent icicles, 
forming towers, arches, and colonnades, of the purest 
turkois : and the rays of the sun, falling upon it, 
are reflected as by brilliants, until one feels that he 
is in one of the magic palaces of Oriental story, in- 
stead of threading his way through the intricacies of 
an ice-field. But we had no time or inclination for 
admiration in our upward tour; for there was no 
sun to light up the magic temples ; and the clouds, 
heavily laden with the descending hail and snow, so 
hemmed us in, that the sense of vision was of very 
little service. Night was fast advancing ; and we 
had no certainty of our position. If the cloud 
should thus continue, there was positive certainty of 
a night-bivouac in the snow. A crevasse was before 
us, to which there seemed no end ; and the guides ran 
back and forth to find some means of escape. Just 
at this moment, the cloud lifted ; and we saw, some 
hundreds of feet above our heads, the black, pointed 
rocks of the Grands Mulets. A shout of joy rose to 
the lips of all. Our day's task seemed nearly at a 
close;, and, summoning all our energies, we soon 
found our pathway, and were climbing at full speed 
up the rugged cliffs. The Grands Mulets seemed 
placed here, an oasis in a desert of snow and ice, to 
furnish rest and protection to the wearied traveller. 
33* 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

It rises, in two or three peaks and a rugged mass of 
rocks, so far above the enchaining ice, that it is en- 
tirely protected from the falling avalanches. Seen 
from the village of Chamouni, a distance of eighteen 
or twenty miles, it looks like black spots on the 
white snow. 

The march of improvement is plainly discernible 
here. The stone hovel, which for the last half-cen- 
tury has formed the only shelter, has now been su- 
perseded by a comfortable wooden building, some 
twenty feet long and eight wide, with stone walls on 
the outside to protect it from the wind, and provided 
with door, windows, table, benches, stove, and other 
furniture. How came this here, at a point so many 
miles distant from, and so many thousand feet above, 
all human habitation ? is the first question which 
suggests itself. Three years since, it was built by 
the combined efforts of the two hundred and forty 
guides of the valley, who brought upon their backs 
the necessary material, each guide putting his num- 
ber in large figures upon his own articles ; so that 
the inner part looks as though it had formed the 
basis of some important mathematical calculation. 

Drenched to the skin, and chilled through by the 
hail and cold atmosphere, we were glad to find a 
pile of dry wood in the corner, left there by the last 
party. Soon it was crackling in flames in the stove, 
and afforded grateful rays of heat to the surrounding 
party. Dry clothes were produced; and I was soon 
in a more comfortable condition. The guides who 
had any fresh clothing availed themselves of it ; and 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 391 

the poor porters took off one piece after another, and 
held it to the stove until it was wholly or partially- 
dry. Hats, caps, boots, mittens, overcoats, and all 
articles of apparel, were disposed of in the most ad- 
vantageous position possible for drying ; and the 
guides took especial care that every garment of mine 
should be perfectly dried for me before we should 
set out. A warm supper, with hot chocolate, formed 
no unpalatable dish, and caused our spirits to rise ; 
and, as the shades of evening fell upon us, the light 
of two wax candles, set in the mouths of wine-bottles 
for candlesticks, gave a cheerful aspect to the room. 
As we all collected around the friendly, warm-hearted 
stove, our conversation turned upon the prospects 
for the morrow. On a previous occasion, one of the 
guides had, on account of the weather, waited here 
three days before he was able to proceed to the sum- 
mit. A second had this season waited a week, and 
then been obliged to return. Another had five 
several times been disappointed by the bad weather. 
The heavy hail, falling upon the roof and driving 
against the door, reminded us what we, too, might 
expect. Once commenced, I had no disposition to 
leave the journey unfinished ; and I made arrange- 
ments, should the storm continue, to have more pro- 
visions sent up, — resolved to remain until it became 
fair again. Determined to make the best of our po- 
sition, I encouraged the guides to sing the " Ranz des 
Vaches," which had a reviving effect ; and for some 
hours they continued singing the wild mountain- 
melodies and relating stories of adventure. Gradu- 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

ally the conversation became less animated ; and, one 
after another, they sought some support for their 
heads. Yielding to the general influence, I repaired 
to my couch on the floor at one end of the room, 
where, with my " Bay State " for a mattress and a 
knapsack for a pillow, I was soon sound asleep. 
At ten o'clock I awoke ; and, hearing continued 
rappings at the door, went to it, only to receive a 
shower of hail in my face, and look out upon pitch 
darkness. A little more sleep ; and at eleven, again 
the pitiless storm, the driving hail, the utter dark- 
ness, and back to bed once more. 

At midnight, or a little past, I was awakened by 
the guides, and told that a star was visible. Anxious 
to confirm the good news, I sought the open air. 
One, two, three, were just visible overhead through 
the thin haze, which gradually disappeared ; and out 
came the stars one by one, until the whole heavens 
seemed studded with them, twinkling as in the clear 
cold of a winter's night. Beneath me, all was one 
dense mass of impenetrable cloud, gradually settling 
thicker and blacker into the valley. Soon a thunder- 
storm arose ; and, as I sat by the door watching it 
below me, the heavy peals of thunder came rolling 
up the sides of the mountain ; and the vivid lightning 
danced from cloud to cloud like some grand exhibi- 
tion, such as no human pyrotechnist would dare at- 
tempt. To add to the grandeur and sublimity of 
the scene, immense avalanches of ice, loosened by 
the rain and snow of the preceding day, from time 
to time came rumbling down, shaking the mountain 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 393 

to its very foundation. This scene impressed me 
more than any thing else I saw in the mountains. 

A little more sleep, and at four o'clock began our 
preparations for the ascent. Every thing was bustle 
and confusion. A breakfast was to be prepared, 
with a hot cup of chocolate, ere we should encounter 
the deep snows and the cold breezes of the glaciers. 
But in the hot chocolate we were sadly disappointed ; 
for, after spending more than half an hour in melt- 
ing the ice and nicely preparing the beverage, to 
drink at the last moment before starting, with sur- 
prise and chagrin we found that a pair of the guides' 
mittens, made of chamois-skin, had been violently 
boiling in the bottom of the kettle during the whole 
time. They had fallen into the kettle during the 
night, and in the dark had been unnoticed by the 
porter as he filled it. We had no time to repair 
our misfortunes, much less disposition to taste the 
strangely seasoned mixture. 

The guides take especial care in clothing the tra- 
veller to protect him from the cold. They wind flax 
about his feet, which are the most exposed part ; put 
on two pairs of woollen stockings, with heavy leg- 
gins, extending above the knee, and firmly strapped 
to the foot, to prevent any thing like the entrance of 
snow ; double-milled drawers ; heavy Scotch-plaid 
pants ; immoderately thick flannel under-shirt ; dou- 
ble-breasted vest ; and two or three coats, according 
to the thickness. These constitute the principal part 
of the wardrobe. The fur about the neck and ears, 
a closely fitting hat, a veil, and spectacles, give a 



394 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

finishing touch to the unique costume. Robed in 
this manner, we started from the Grands Mulets at 
five, a.m. As a first precaution, we tied ourselves 
together by ropes some fifteen feet long, firmly at- 
tached to the waist. The porters gave us a very 
hearty round of cheers, and wished us a speedy re- 
turn. They were to remain here until the morning 
was well advanced, and then, with the heavier bag- 
gage, to start for the village. The morning was as 
clear and beautiful as we could have wished. The rain 
and lightning had purified the atmosphere ; and there 
seemed absolutely nothing to obstruct the vision. 
Low down in the valleys were clouds ; and each had 
its own particular shade of color, varying from a light 
gray to a dark blue. Here and there a valley was 
entirely clear, and displayed, coursing along at its 
bottom, a silvery rivulet, — perhaps the accumulated 
tears of the mighty glaciers, weeping at their fallen 
state. The guides were constantly exclaiming, as 
they looked about them, " Quel beau temps, il fait 
magnifique ; quel grandeur, quelle sublimite ! " 
The morning sun was beginning to gild the tops of 
the mountains, and, by reflection of its rays, to cast 
a delicate shade on every thing about us. I could 
not resist the temptation to stop and admire ; although 
the guides hurried me on, fearing lest the mid-day 
sun should melt the snow and render the walking dif- 
ficult ere we reached the summit. We had not gone 
far before a huge chasm, caused by the descent of 
an avalanche of ice from the Dome du Goute, inter- 
posed to' stop our further progress. It seemed abso- 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 395 

lutely impassable ; and the demand of the guides a 
yarler resulted in sending Devouassoud, the lightest 
and most active of the company, in search of some 
new path. He was successful; but it required a 
detour of more than a mile ; and then we were obliged 
to cross the chasm on a bridge of ice scarce three 
inches in width, and, in the narrowest place, not 
more than two feet in depth, — thrown across like 
a piece of timber. Devouassoud went over first to 
try the strength of the bridge ; while the athlete 
Couttet stood upon the edge and held firmly to the 
rope, letting it out slowly as he advanced. We 
were stationed lower down the mountain, and 
strongly braced ourselves to support them in case the 
bridge should give way. The first once safely over, 
assistance was afforded from both sides to the next. 
All went over in safety ; and in descending, though 
the sun had melted the ice considerably, it still re- 
mained true to its mission ; and we could not but 
praise the frail structure which had rendered us such 
good service. 

Three hours' fast walking brought us to the Grand 
Plateau, an irregularly level plain, with abrupt moun- 
tains on three sides. The sun was shining warmly ; 
and, sheltered from the wind, we sat down upon the 
snow to take a repast from our chickens and other 
viands. Two or three miles' walking on the level 
snow brought us near the spot where the fatal acci- 
dent occurred to Dr. Hamel's party in 1820. The 
guides involuntarily shuddered as they pointed to 
the spot where, buried in the snow at an unknown 



396 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

depth, are preserved the bodies of their former faith- 
ful companions, and then rapidly hurried on. A 
steep and circuitous ascent of some four miles 
winds around the Rochers Rouges, and is called the 
Corridor. The first part of this rises at an angle of 
sixty degrees, and the newly fallen snow rendered it 
very difficult to climb. At this point, Sir Thomas 
Talfourd and his son were obliged to give up the 
journey ; and many others, from entire exhaus- 
tion, have been compelled to follow their example. 
The upper part was not so steep, but one continued 
and hard ascent. At the top of the Corridor is the 
famous Mur de la Cote, which, on account of the 
hardness of the ice, requires steps to be cut all the 
way to the top, — a height of about two hundred feet. 
From the accounts I had read, and the pictures I 
had seen, of this terrible " wall," I had feared this 
part of the ascent very much ; but was agreeably 
disappointed. The little intervals of rest, while the 
guides were cutting the steps, sufficed to invigorate 
me ; and, by the time we reached the top of the 
Cote, I felt quite refreshed. A little incident oc- 
curred here, which, though perplexing at the time, 
was of slight importance. We had brought a pistol 
along with us, intending to fire it from the summit ; 
but when near the top of the Mur de la Cote, on 
changing the knapsack from one guide to another, 
the pistol fell out ; and away it went, whirling on at 
a furious rate to the glacier beneath. It was vexa- 
tious to see it quietly lying some two hundred feet 
beneath us ; but we had no power to conjure it back. 






ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 397 

A walk of fifteen minutes brought us to the 
Petits Mulets, the last rocks seen on the route ; and 
from this point commences the Calotte, or true Mont 
Blanc cone, which is ascended the entire distance by 
zigzags. From the first we had seen summits be- 
fore us, which, when we had climbed, displayed 
others equally distant from us, until at last we 
began to lose all our confidence, and to doubt if 
there were really such a thing in existence ; but 
the moment the guides separate and say, " Here is 
the summit : will you ascend first ? " all doubts 
vanish; and a few steps more place you on the 
crowning point of all your labors, with a view burst- 
ing upon you which no pen can describe. Better 
might one attempt to tell the sublimity of lightning, 
or the grandeur of Niagara. A hundred miles are 
open to you in every direction ; mountains of im- 
mense height are directly below ; and, from an 
elevation of nearly sixteen thousand feet, France, 
Switzerland, Austria, and Italy are spread out like a 
map before you. 

It was just mid-day when we reached the top. 
The wind was blowing freshly ; but the sky was 
clear, and not a cloud to be seen. Directly over- 
head, the sky was of the deepest blue color, almost 
approaching black ; but, toward the horizon, it be- 
came a lighter and more common shade. The air 
was perfectly pure, with none of that indefinite haze 
which I have almost invariably found upon other oc- 
casions in Switzerland, even in the clearest weather, 
and which renders distance and distant objects par- 

34 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

tially obscure. The mountains and every thing 
within the extensive range of vision were clearly 
and sharply denned ; and the guides, who had all 
visited the place before, declared that they had never 
seen such an atmosphere. 

A range of snow-capped mountains on the east 
seems almost the first object to attract attention. It 
is the beautiful Monte Rosa, with its graceful pizzos, 
— white, black, and red, — which stand as faithful 
guardians to their lovely queen. The picture is 
more vividly impressed upon my mind than any 
other seen from the summit. The most varied and 
extensive view is toward the north-west. Directly 
beneath is the fine valley of Chamouni, with the old 
Priory scarcely distinguishable ; and the village itself, 
best pointed out by the smoke of the booming can- 
non, which apprised me that my friends were watch- 
ing. Hardly higher were the Flegere and Brevent, 
with a valley to separate them from the still greater 
Buet. Just beyond this was the beautiful Vale of 
Sixt ; then came the Mole ; and seemingly but a very 
short distance was the Lake of Geneva, quietly im- 
bosomed in hills. Crescentic in its form, it lay like 
a fragmentary mirror. The famed Jura were easily 
distinguished ; and far beyond, and a little to the 
southward, spread out the plains of la belle France, 
watered by the meandering Rhone and Saone, visible 
as small silvery lines. 

Farther east, in the centre of Switzerland, the 
mountain-peaks rise without number, many of them 
covered with snow. Among these may be recog- 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 399 

nized the Jungfrau, Monch, Wetter, and Faul 
Horns ; and still more distant, standing up in clear 
and solitary grandeur, the famous Bighi Kulm. 

The south-east presents no prominent points, but 
seems one vast plain, with here and there a little 
hill rising in the midst. This view is terminated by 
a slight irregularity, as if to give a finish — a kind 
of border or fringe — to the charming landscape. 
It is the Apennines, stretched from the most southern 
point of sunny Italy, till they come within sight of 
the snow-clad monarch. 

The Mediterranean, it is said, has never been seen 
from this point by travellers ; but far, far away to 
the south, a little line of blue, differing from the 
horizon, was visible ; and the guides at once declared 
it must be the sea. To me it seemed incredible, as 
the Gulf of Genoa, the nearest part, cannot be less 
than one hundred and sixty or one hundred and 
seventy miles. But no doubts of mine could affect 
the decision of the guides ; and I was quite willing 
to abide by it, and, Balboa-like, consider myself the 
first discoverer. 

The extreme summit undoubtedly changes very 
much at different times. * In a picture I have lately 
seen, the summit is made to resemble nothing so much 
as a huge wasp's nest, round, and the sides covered 
with little ridges ; but at this time it had a very dif- 
ferent aspect. It was about three hundred feet in 



* A very beautiful series of four views of the Ascent of Mont Blanc, by John 
McGregor, Esq., has recently been published by Baxter, of London. The first, 
a view of the Glaciers at Sunset, is excellent ; the others might be improved. 



400 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

length, a little higher at one end than the other, and 
very sharp and narrow the entire length. The form 
and appearance were similar to a steep, tiled roof. 
The south-western extremity is an abrupt precipice 
of some hundreds of feet in depth. The wind was 
blowing strongly from the north-east ; and the only 
manner of remaining on the summit was by being 
attached with cords to the four guides, who remained 
lower down the side of the mountain. "With one 
foot upon either side of Mont Blanc, and aided by 
my faithful baton, I slowly advanced to the very 
highest part, the crowning point of Europe, if not, 
from its position and importance, of the whole world. 
I had a pebble in my pocket, which, the summer 
previous, I had taken from the extreme summit of 
Mount Washington. I broke it at this place, and 
left it, as a first greeting from the White Mountains 
— the Mont Blanc of America — to the Mont Blanc 
of Europe. It was with reluctance that I turned to 
leave the spot ; but I was obliged to obey the com- 
mands of the guides, whose faces were becoming 
quite blue from the effects of the wind and cold. 

The descent is in striking contrast with the ascent ; 
and so agreeable is it, that, were it performed first, I 
think half the world would make the journey. In- 
stead of continual climbing, panting, and struggling, 
there was a gentle, easy, and rapid movement, with- 
out any fatiguing effort. The iron-shod heels were 
firmly set in the hard snow ; and, leaning back on the 
batons, the company, still tied together, began slowly 
to slide down the snowy side. Soon we had accus- 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 401 

tomed ourselves to our new position, and, with con- 
fidence in our power of keeping right side up, in- 
creased our speed to a rapid, then to a furious, rate. 
Down, down, down we went, over hillocks and 
through valleys ; now striking on a ridge of snow, and 
now bounding into the air. " Don't be frightened ; 
you are neither a Pegasus, nor so high that gravita- 
tion will not reach you. You will come down 
again, even if it be some ten or fifteen feet below." 
On, on, till the whistle of the conductor sounds. 
" Down with the brakes ! " which consisted of the 
aforesaid iron heels and steel-pointed batons, and the 
train was almost instantly stopped. "Les Petits 
Mulets. Passengers will please dine." The dis- 
tance was more than a mile, which we had traversed 
in less than five minutes. After making a good din- 
ner from the remains of our cold fowls and leg of 
roast mutton, we started again, and, with walking, 
running, jumping, and sliding, managed to make 
good headway, and in two hours and three-quarters 
were at the Grands Mulets. 

At the foot of the Mur de la Cote, near where our 
pistol had been lying, we found two wine-bottles, 
which had been left by some former party. These, 
with one of our own, we started down the corridor 
in advance of us. At first they moved slowly, but, 
with increased momentum, soon went leaping from 
crag to crag and point to point, now whirling through 
the air, and again glissading on the smooth surface, 
until they were lost to sight. They had taken differ- 
ent directions ; and, supposing we had seen the last 

34* 



40£ ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

of them, what was our surprise, on descending some 
three or four miles, to find the three bottles, unbroken, 
lying, side by side, at the bottom of a small crevasse, 
not far from the spot where Dr. Hamel's party were 
swept away! "Peut-etre les trois guides sont pres 
de la-bas," said the honest David, as he drew a deep 
sigh and brushed away a tear. " Allons ! chacun 
fait son temps. C'est mieux dans la glace que dans 
la mer ! " 

Poor fellows ! they never pass this spot without 
thinking of their former companions, whose bodies 
are embalmed in the depths of the mighty glacier. 
But, with all its dangers, these noble-hearted fellows 
love the free mountain-life with an ardor almost 
amounting to devotion ; and, when deprived of it, a 
home-sickness seizes them, which has proved so 
common and fatal, that physicians have given it the 
name of Nostalgia. It is not strange that they 
should prefer a grave amid the glaciers to that 
which so many have found in the depths of the 
mighty ocean. 

The only accidents on the descent were the break- 
ing of one of the guides' batons while we were 
rapidly sliding, which caused him to make several 
revolutions before he could stop himself, — all done, 
however, without injury. At another time, Simond 
carelessly slid over a covered crevasse where the 
snow was soft. Instantly it gave way ; and, quicker 
than thought, he twirled his baton across the cre- 
vasse, and sprang backward in time to save himself. 
On examining the opening, we found the crevasse 
about two feet wide, and of immeasurable depth. 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 403 

As we entered our " hotel " at the Grands Mulets, 
we heard the report of the cannon from the valley 
below, repeated five times, — the number of our 
party, — showing that they knew of our position 
and safety. Our bills were soon settled, baggage 
packed up, and we en route again. The glaciers 
were for the last time crossed ; the moraines, with 
their trembling rocks and narrow paths, were passed ; 
the Chalet de la Para, with fresh whey and sociable 
old man, reached ; and then rapidly down the moun- 
tain-sides we went, until in two hours and three- 
quarters from the Grands Mulets we were once 
more safely in the village of Chamouni ; thus mak- 
ing the entire descent in five and a half hours, — a 
distance of about thirty -two miles. Here we found 
our friends, and in fact the whole village, in the 
streets, waiting to receive us. 

It is for the interest of the hotel-keepers at Cha- 
mouni to make the most possible of any uncommon 
occurrence ; and, on the occasion of an ascent, the 
village is all astir. The route up the mountain is 
visible the entire distance ; and visitors repair by 
hundreds to the Brevent, Flegere, and other promi- 
nent points, where, with spy-glasses and lorgnettes, 
they watch the progress of the party, resembling black 
specks moving at snail-pace on the snow. Every inci- 
dent was noticed by the watchers with most powerful 
glasses, — even to the sitting down to lunch, and the 
falling of the guide in the crevasse. It was nearly 
eight o'clock when we entered the village. All 
crowded around to learn particulars ; and all seemed 



404 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

to have a greater estimate of our fatigue than we 
felt at the time. Bouquets were placed in our hands ; 
and slowly we were allowed to wend our way through 
the crowd to our hotel. An arch had been erected 
in front of the house, through which we passed ; 
the house itself was trimmed and illuminated ; and 
the parlor had its centre-table covered with bouquets 
and champagne bottles, for myself and friends ; and 
I was then and there expected to relate to the com- 
pany something strange, wonderful, or terrible in 
respect to my adventure. Under the excitement I 
felt not fatigue, but was glad to escape from the 
heat of the room, the crowd of friends who were 
pressing about me, and the deafening reports of the 
cannon, which had now become almost continuous, 
into the comparative quiet of my own room. A cold 
bath and a change of clothing prepared me for a 
good dinner ; and then, to a few of my friends, I 
related all incidents connected with the ascent. Be- 
fore I retired to rest, the midnight stars were twin- 
kling, clear and bright, above the head of the old 
mountain-king, towards which I looked with min- 
gled feelings of awe, gratitude, and affection. My 
sleep was considerably disturbed by a severely pain- 
ful attack of ophthalmia, — occasioned, I suppose, 
by the intense reflection of the sun on the white 
snow ; my eyes, at the time, not being sufficiently 
protected. This lasted but a few hours, when all 
painful reminiscences of the trip left me. 

On the following day, the guides brought me a for- 
mal document on stamped paper, signed by the Syn- 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 405 

die of the Commune of Chamouni, and bearing his 
seal of state, together with the signature of the di- 
rector-general of the guides, and the attestations of 
the four guides who accompanied me. This testifies 
in an exaggerated manner to my courage, intrepidi- 
ty, and coolness in the most perilous situations, and 
that this ascension was made in less time than had 
ever before been known. I keep the document as 
an evidence of the manner in which governments 
there do business, — taking notice of the slightest 
occurrences. In the evening I gave a supper to the 
guides, according to the usual custom. Some indi- 
viduals who had before made the ascent, together with 
several friends, joined us ; and, with toasts, speeches, 
and songs, we passed an evening not soon to be 
forgotten. It made a happy termination of my 
connection with those brave fellows, who had ac- 
companied me up the mountain, through all the 
labor and fatigue, and whatever of insecurity there 
might have been. 

The difficulties and dangers attending this jour- 
ney have often been exaggerated. That it requires 
strong lungs, a steady head, and considerable exer- 
tion, no one, who has been to the top of Bunker-hill 
Monument, will for a moment doubt ; but the real 
dangers I deem very slight, and only of two kinds : 
First, from avalanches, against which it would be im- 
possible for the traveller to protect himself. But 
there are very few of these, — perhaps not more than 
half a dozen occur annually along the route ; and 
there is only the very slightest possibility that one 



406 ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 

will occur at the precise time and spot where the 
party may be. Second, the crevasses, which may al- 
ways be avoided by a careful and observant guide. 
Regarding the rarefaction of the atmosphere, I expe- 
rienced no ill effects from it whatever. That we all 
had short, rapid, and panting respiration, is true ; 
but there are very few persons who have not experi- 
enced the same on ascending much smaller moun- 
tains. Indeed, the year previous, I had the same dif- 
ficulty, and to a still greater extent, on ascending 
Mount Washington ; so that it cannot be wholly at- 
tributed to the altitude. The sharp wind and cold 
temperature would do much toward producing the 
blue lips and nails ; and the over-exertion, continued 
for hours, would be sufficient to account for all drow- 
siness, congestion, dizziness, and fainting. 

With no little experience in mountain-climbing, I 
must say, that I have always been better able to bear 
the fatigue, with less ill effects afterwards, by re- 
fraining entirely from the use of stimulants during 
the time of the exertion ; and I must strongly urge 
any who intend making a long and severe journey, 
particularly among mountains and mountain-scenery, 
to leave the brandy-flask and wine-bottle at home, 
and, as far as possible, induce their guides or com- 
panions to do the same. However much they may 
indulge at other times, they ought, on these occa- 
sions at least, to have a clear head and steady hand. 
I regret to say, that, from the testimony of all the 
guides whom I questioned on the subject, and from 
the accounts which have been published, a large 



ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 407 

number of those who have reached the summit of 
Mont Blanc, and a still greater number who have 
failed in the attempt, have had all the prostration of 
intoxication added to that of fatigue. 

In reply to the question often asked, " Would 
you advise any one else to make the trip ? " I would 
say : For the mere name of having been a little high- 
er than others, or for curiosity alone, most emphati- 
cally, No! But to one young, active, and strong, 
who is willing to undergo the necessary toil, fatigue, 
and effort, and run all risks of bad weather or fail- 
ure from any cause, — for a single cloud is sufficient to 
destroy the whole pleasure, and leave but the remem- 
brance of hard work ; if he will incur all this for 
the chance of seeing the grandest and most magnifi- 
cent panorama the world presents, then go by all 
means ; and, if successful, it will afford him, as it 
has me, many an hour of after-pleasure. 

Boston, Aug. 1, 1855. 









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